zlacker

>>Fabian+(OP)
THESE DOCUMENTS CONTAIN EVIDENCE OF ATTACKS ON VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, TOR. What do we do now? No seriously, what do we do?

The full list of documents: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-atta...

The accompanying lecture: http://streaming.media.ccc.de/relive/6258/

Also, obligatory: https://eff.org/donate

>>diafyg+S1
Earlier this year at goto copenhagen I heard a good talk by Tim bray:

http://gotocon.com/cph-2014/presentation/Privacy%20and%20Sec...

Where he argues that even though we can not achieve complete security there is great value in raising the bar. If we continuously make it increasingly harder for NSA, MOSAD, GCHQ and the rest of them to spy on us, we can achieve good enough privacy. Where most communication will be secure. But he also argues that if one of these agencies really wants to target YOU specifically they will get to the information. By breaking into your house and installing cameras, if necessary.

>>freedu+z4
> If we continuously make it increasingly harder for NSA, MOSAD, GCHQ and the rest of them to spy on us, we can achieve good enough privacy

Right now everyone's digital communications are being collected by those agencies, via fiber optic cable taps [1]. This could be called bulk surveillance. Different people & groups have access to these databases of communications. Some are government employees, some are contractors. Now, what if an activist or a Senator starts speaking out against bulk surveillance? Would those with access to the databases be tempted to run a few queries?

  'SELECT * FROM `sms` WHERE `person_id`="$senator_id"'

Note: Most analysts would never run that query. But it just takes one.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews...

>>ChrisA+Ma
FWIW, if I were a senator who was considering taking on the intelligence community I would probably think it through and have my house in order first. Politicians aren't known for being tech savvy, but they aren't known for being stupid either. People took on McCarthy, Hoover and Nixon and they survived.

Most people here don't have a lot of faith in our system of government these days and even less faith in those that do the governing. But the truth is that the american democracy has been around for hundreds of years and it will take more than a SQL statement to bring it down. There are checks and balances and highly motivated and intelligent people with a lot to lose on both sides of every issue. This too shall pass.