The Solution to NSA Snooping?

Unless I am mis-interpreting something that you say, at least part of it is not true. When I go to http://www.google.com/ on either IE or AOL this is what I end up with: http://www.google.com/webhp?nord=1. Https never shows up anywhere. However, when I go to Google on Chrome it does open as Https.

Another option for end-to-end encryption is the service from Virtru.com With it, you can send encrypted mail from web based e-mail to anyone, even if they don't have virtru installed on their system. Extremely easy to use. I would be interested in hearing from someone smarter than I (that doesn't take much!) about security on what they think of this service/extension.

Any yes, Edward Snowden is a hero - Keith Alexander and James Clapper are liars.

Bob,

You have to be a little bit more cautious when you praise the encryption used by Goggle and other corporations.

You took it for granted that “End-to-End Encryption” provides solid privacy. This assumption is not necessarily correct.

The “S” in HTTPS may mean that you and I cannot decrypt the allegedly “secure” data. How can you be sure that the NSA cannot decrypt it?

You wrote,

“Encryption adds quite a bit of overhead to any computing process.”

Your statement is correct and I suggest the following statement is almost certainly also correct,

“Decryption adds a little bit of overhead to the NSA’s snooping process.”

Encryption is an illusion. E

This is only temporary, after a time they will work around this encryption and start spying. There is nothing we can do about it, this will be only temporary fixes. After all they took (stole)your Social Security taxes so you would have it when you retire, and now they keep saying SS will be broke soon. If a bank did this there would be He... to pay, but if you'r the government it's OK. This will never change. It is the best around, but not error-less.

It is VERY interesting to note that the data from the replies to this article, when you toss out the 'outliers' from misreading, forms a single-tailed Chi Square with a virtual horizontal line(no real slope). And with only a couple of questionable response along the lines of 'only history will tell' - p seems to = 1. Like I said VERY interesting. p=1 is VERY significant (ya think?). I think this tells you more about your readership than you ever thought it would. Or at least that only people who post are the pesky trouble makers. It's worth thinking about (really). Perhaps it simply shows that only people with "inquiring minds" "who want to know" read your newsletter. Either way, I sure won't skew the graph with my "well informed and considered thoughts" (the etymological definition of 'opinion'). Which leads to the sad but inevitable conclusion that NO!, many people are NOT entitled to voice their opinion, since they don't really have one. Congratulations on reaching p=1!!!! I an now officially impressed.

I can't believe some of your readers did not catch the satirical tone of your opening comments, Bob. That is the danger of satire I guess.

>>Do we want to give unelected people the power to decide who is electable? Has anybody led such a blameless life that they cannot be embarrassed by any revelation?

Last time I checked both the USA and the UK were democracies.

Neither the NSA or GCHQ are tools of unelected people. They are directly managed by our elected representatives. Just because we may not have voted for those in power (as I didn't) doesn't mean that they were not elected.

Perhaps it is our own prejudices we should look at rather than the 'missdeeds' of others. For example Clinton was pilloried BUT the recent squabble in France was because the politician in question was being impolite to his mistress by taking the person he was having an affair with to official functions - bad manners always unforgivable!

This is the business of government, it's a lot cheaper and safer than 'boots on the ground'.

Simple solution send letters and keep post people in jobs. If secrecy is so important can't it wait a few days?

Jon

P.S. Aren't all the bad boys and girls using the draft function of gmail as dead letter boxes these days anyway? Is the NSA as behind the times as MI6?

@dgm21
>> if you want to read about the latest NSA whistle-blower look up James Tye and EO12333
>> if you want to hear about one of the early whistle blowers: 1. WHAT HE DID: A fierce supporter of the airplane and a separate air force, Gen. BILLY MITCHELL (U.S Army, 1926) alienated his slow-to-adapt superiors, finally accusing them of “almost treasonable administration of the national defense.” THE PRICE HE PAID: Mitchell was court-martialed and found guilty of insubordination. He resigned his commission but didn’t live long enough to see Pearl Harbor prove him right.

Just checked the Chrome browser extension link for end-to-end encryption, but it doesn't appear to be ready for prime time on the great, unwashed masses' devices yet.

Yes, NSA is Snooping. But don't be fooled by those big named web mail providers. They are collecting as much information as possible. Even most smart phones are collecting for those big names that I will not mention as they may be a supporter of this blog.

Has anyone forgotten that we still need privacy protection from Google, a major snooper before the NSA even existed. And the definition of irony is anyone who joins Facebook and then complains of privacy violations. But those are topics for other articles.

Whenever the message is de-encrypted for you to read it is readable to everyone. E

What if I want to send a single encrypted email to multiple email addresses (distribution list).

"Before anyone thinks I am about to run off and start the British Tea Party, I'm a Socialist, member of the UK Labour Party.

Privacy and safety are not always compatible. I for one would favour safety every time."

I, too, am a U.K. citizen and have occasionally voted for the Labour party in the past. However, it's comments like this which ensure I will never do so in the future. When will these idiots ever understand that it's our own governments that present the greatest threat to, not only our liberty, but our safety too.

>>Last time I checked both the USA and the UK were democracies.

Keep checking, Jon.

If a politician were to stand for election looking as though they might actually do something effective to curb the intrusions of the "security industry", is it inconceivable that something embarassing about this candidate might just happen to leak just prior to the election?

I hope my scenario is unduly paranoid, but this fast-growing potential should, nevertheless, give us all pause for thought. Knowledge is power; secret knowledge is secret power; the rapid erosion of our privacy has far-reaching implications...

I was in the US Air Force through four years of the Cold War (thus I am held in contempt by vets who served in Korea before service and Viet Nam after my discharge.) I had a top secret clearance with a crypto endorsement and I worked at HQ SAC in a vault, two stories underground, directly above the three story underground "war room." I operated and repaired crypto machines which linked the Pentagon, The White House, and air force bases all over the world. Anybody who says encryption is a myth is ignorant of the facts. You can be sure that contemporary encryption is far superior to the vacuum tube based stuff I worked on, but our "key" in those days was a pseudorandom string that had an estimated repetition rate of tens of thousands of years, yet we changed it every eight hours, just to be sure.

In that duty I could read anything that our crypto center was encrypting, and being intelligent and curious, I did a lot of reading. Hey, I was locked in a vault with a six digit combination lock on the bomb proof door with two other guys, and the machines were automatic. What else was there to do? I used to read the President's daily intelligence report. Yeah. Every day. Six days out of nine (our weird work week.) I concluded that it was the spies on both sides of the iron curtain that kept our countries from blowing up the world. They (the commies) knew what we had, we knew what they had, and we both knew the consequences of using it. So, we held our breath and got a red telephone and a few other things. Snowden and Julian Assange both pushed the spy business to a new level. The old cold war spies worked for a government that kept the "intelligence" a secret. This generation publishes it worldwide. Freedom of the press. The Founding Fathers are dancing gleefully up there in the cloud(s)!

Incidentally, I would suggest that we should discriminate between the actions of Julian Assange whose motive seems to have been an indiscriminate dislike of secrets and a willingness to reveal them without real consideration of the consequences, and Edward Snowden whose intention seems to have been a desire to inform debate about the consequences of the unbridled and indiscriminate accumulation of power in our world. In this he seems to have succeeded without unnecessarily endangering individuals in the field. I would not deny the need for some secrecy, but we need to consider the implications for our society if we fail to define its limits.

Too bad that Congress didn't get Snowden during the last Ice Age.

What is needed is a government-authorised, security cleared, independent organisation that whistleblowers can legally send top secret info. Said body could then evaluate the info on the basis of the public good and also communicate with the whistleblower to explain any decisions not to publish.

The communications would be confidential, and the whistleblower could remain anonymous, sending and receiving messages using asymmetric encryption on a website via onion router.

As the whistleblower retains the option of going public, it is in the government's interest to ensure that this organisation has a good reputation and communicates effectively with whistleblowers.

Such a system would improve transparency, whilst helping to protect information that is secret for a good reason.