Apparently we are all terrorists for wanting to know the truth or wanting to keep our information private
Personally, at present I am not sure how I would use Tor, but will be looking further into it andI encourage everyone else to, if you've got something important.
I have a message for anyone in special services choosing to work on surveilling the rest of us
IT IS YOU WHO ARE SERVING THE ENEMIES OF HUMANITY!
XKeyscore
exposed: How NSA tracks all German Tor users as 'extremists'
RT,
3
July, 2014
The
NSA has been revealed to mark and consider potential "extremists"
all users of the internet anonymizer service Tor. Among those are
hundreds of thousands of privacy concerned people like journalists,
lawyers and rights activists.
Searching
for encryption software like the Linux-based operating system Tails
also places you on the NSA grid, as Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and
John Goetz revealed on
the German site Tagesschau. The report is based on analysis of the
source code of the software used by NSA’s electronic surveillance
program XKeyscore.
Tor
is a system of servers, which routes user requests through a layer of
secured connections to make it impossible to identify a user’s IP
from the addresses of the websites he/she visits. The network of some
5,000 is operated by enthusiasts and used by hundreds of thousands of
privacy-concerned people worldwide. Some of them live in countries
with oppressive regimes, which punish citizens for visiting websites
they deem inappropriate.
But
merely visiting Tor project’s website puts
you on the NSA’s red list, the report says. But more importantly it
monitors connections to so-called Directory Authorities, the eight
servers, which act as gateways for the entire system.
The
NSA was particularly surveilling German-based Tor Directory
Authorities. One is operated by the Germany-based hacker group Chaos
Computer Club, the other by computer science student Sebastian Hahn,
who told journalists that the revelation is “shocking.”
The
system itself doesn’t appear to be compromised however, but the NSA
gets data like IP addresses of those using it, enough to
cross-reference them with other databases the agency has access to.
There
are indications that NSA may be collecting not only the metadata of
the people on the list, but also read their email exchanges with Tor.
An
interest in Tor is not the only way to make it to NSA’s watch list.
Even web searches for other encryption software makes you a target as
well, the report said.
Disturbingly,
NSA programmer comments in the source code label those picked up by
the American system “extremists.”
The
report says XKeyscore marks all people that hit the red light on its
grid, with the exception of those connecting from members of the Five
Eyes, a group of countries cooperating in intelligence gathering,
namely the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It
was not immediately clear how the authors of the publication obtained
the source code of XKeyscore software, but the existence of the
system was revealed in
2013 through documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Ironically,
Tor was originally created for the US Navy and still receives a major
part of its funding from the US government - the same government that
considers its users "extremists".
Anonymous
experts told Boing
Boing that the new leak may come from a second source, not Edward
Snowden as nothing of the kind had ever been seen this in the
original Snowden documents or intended publications.
Other related stories:
NSA whistleblowers testify in Bundestag inquiry, disclose ‘totalitarian’ surveillance
Former
NSA agents-turned-whistleblowers are testifying before a German
parliamentary committee as the Bundestag investigates America’s
wiretapping methods with one of them branding the NSA approach
“totalitarian.”....
Investigators in the United States won’t be handed over the decryption keys necessary to access digital data seized from the home of internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom in early 2012, a New Zealand judge ruled this week.
Authorities raided Dotcom’s mansion outside of Auckland, New Zealand, nearly two-and-a-half years ago as part of an operation conducted with the aid of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in response to felony copyright infringement and racketeer....
A Swedish court has set the date for the Assange “rape case” hearing for July 16. The announcement comes as Twitter is bombarded with happy birthday wishes to the WikiLeaks founder, who turned 43 on Thursday, his second year at the Ecuadorean embassy....
A
clever hacker can turn a modern mobile device into a spy, surveilling
its owner. But there is a straightforward response to it. A new
Russian tablet thwarts hackers by physically disconnecting
communication modules and sensors on demand.
The
blunt-but-effective approach may sound like overkill, but the
developer, a Russian research institute specializing in creating
communication systems and providing IT security solutions for the
military hopes their potential clients would appreciate it.
The
device, dubbed ‘Rupad’ by some media, is meant for the Russian
armed forces, law enforcement agencies and secret services. The ‘kill
communications’ button it features affects GPS, 3G, WiFi and
Bluetooth modules, as well as its two cameras, microphone and even
speaker, Deputy director for development at TsNII EISU, Dmitry
Petrov, told RIA Novosti....
More information on the Tor Project is available HERE
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