How to make the NSA lives more difficult?

a reply to: Wiz4769

Id prob confuse em anyway.

Im the sort of person who spends hours trawling for all manner of subjects as I like to learn. Anything from Science, to history, law and just learning how stuff works. Yesterday I think I went from money laundering laws to how to build a home made Farnsworth fusion generator. Talk about random confusing mess unless they now flagged me as a lone wolf terrorist that trying to launder money to build a massive nuclear bomb I should order some tritium and uraniaum off ebay to really screw with them hahahahahahaha

PS to NSA watching that was a joke.

Soooo...all this being said...how would y'all feel if all this bogging down and thwarting of the NSA prevented their hearing the real terrorist chatter? So be it?

Or is the point that any terrorist worth a damn would just thwart it too so why bother?

originally posted by: ~Lucidity
Soooo...all this being said...how would y'all feel if all this bogging down and thwarting of the NSA prevented their hearing the real terrorist chatter? So be it?

Id rather have privacy and live with a very small risk of a attack then live in a surveillance state. I should be allowed to say what I like and do what I like without some American government bastard in a office looking over my shoulder.

If they had focused on just monitoring REAL terrorist rather than everyone then maybe they would not have that problem? Maybe if they had been more focused on who to spy on they could have stopped China hacking all the US military secrets.

Quiet frankly if they are too busy looking at me and a terrorist or foreign agent slips by then the problem is with THEM for fcking up there focus.

originally posted by: ~Lucidity
Or is the point that any terrorist worth a damn would just thwart it too so why bother?

Quiet frankly yeah. I doubt a real terrorist blabs online what hes going to do.

a reply to: crazyewok

I always figured REAL terrorists most likely communicate in MMORPGs (Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games. Think World of Warcraft or Everquest).

See, they could establish code-words and phrases for their actions that fit within normal chatter on the game. "I need you deliver the bomb to Ahmed, money transfer will be completed upon receipt" could become "I need you to send The Sword of Herculean Proportions to Sylthanyos the Night Elf. I'll send you 200,000 gold pieces once he gets it."

Boom, no flags, just two gamers talking about trading a sword.

a reply to: crazyewok

Problem is real terrorists can be savvier than we are and piggyback on our stuff. It's a dilemma.

originally posted by: ~Lucidity
a reply to: crazyewok

Problem is real terrorists can be savvier than we are and piggyback on our stuff. It's a dilemma.

common sense says do not use electronic communication devices. the real terrorists we have to worry about, are the ones that think outside the box...I think that's why governments are so worried about these small inexpensive aerial copters

a reply to: jimmyx
True. Or the ones creating their own networks. Carrier pigeons are making a comeback too I've heard.

a reply to: crazyewok

Honestly, I think you far more to fear from financial hackers who'll want to steal your CC, bank, or paypal info, or infect you with a RAT or botnet or various spyware or ransomware, or those who harvest your personal info for reasons large and small - government seems the least of your worries (and frankly, for the things that someone might do that might trigger government involvement? I probably would *want* them caught. )

I'd think most of what you're likely to do to avoid government surveillance will only make you more a target of government surveillance. And in the unlikely event the NSA takes an active involvement in what you're up to, I'm pretty sure you'd be child's play to them.

Like I said, the biggest threat to your personal liberty is probably some 17-year-old Romanian kid who wants to get hold of your personal info so he can open up a hundred charge cards in your name, so protecting yourself from those kinds of threats is where I'd spend my cycles.

IMO, of course.

a reply to: ScientificRailgun

IIRC, discussing plans for a "wedding" was what tipped the FBI into a number of plots. So, yes, code phrases are used by even the most simple-minded terrorist.

a reply to: crazyewok

I just go on wierd porn sites and download it in suspiciously marked files that I know they're going to try and open.

Or look up really suspicious things in certain orders, enough to pop up a red flag for monitoring and then I go on to rule 34 sites... and 4chan. Can't forget 4chan

If there's someone assigned to watch everything I do, I must make them quit their job every week ha

a reply to: crazyewok

If u are that serious buy a pay as u go Sim card that u can top up in cash and buy a top up credit card.

You are now anonymous.

a reply to: crazyewok
Bruce Schneier wrote an essay on this very subject about a year ago. The gist is that you can't have perfect security, but you can take a number of measures to make any attempts at surveillance more expensive, which I think fits your objective. A few things to remember:

1. Breaking encryption is expensive. You need to (a) subvert a cryptosystem, (b) get a trojan on the target's computer, or (c) perform computationally expensive mathematical operations. The resources needed to subvert cryptosystems and remotely access computers, especially outside the reach of the US government, are very specialized and limited, and require continual research to remain up to date. The computational resources to read encrypted traffic are also limited. They aren't going to use these resources unless they think there's a take to be had. (But they can put together a good model of you from unencrypted metadata.)

2. Since they can model your online behavior through your metadata, obscure as much of that as possible. Use Tor and throwaway email accounts. Don't reuse user names. Minimize your browser fingerprint, use a UA spoofer to make it look like everyone else's browser, even if it is not. Use one browser for activities that can identify you (social networking, shopping, etc.) and another browser for activities that you don't want to identify you. Don't let them share anything in common, such as accounts, IP addresses, etc.

3. NSA stores encrypted traffic for future exploitation. Storage is not very expensive, but it's not unlimited, either. Everyone suggesting downloading plaintext donkey porn and making those poor analysts and Ft. Meade watch it all day is wrong. You should download encrypted donkey porn (assuming it's legal in your jurisdiction), as much of it as you can, to fill up that datacenter in Utah. The more donkey porn NSA warehouses, the shorter the retention period for the non-pornographic traffic they acquire. To make the NSA keep it, your donkey porn should be associated with one of the selectors they track, so share your it on extremist websites, or maybe send it to Chancellor Merkel's phone (assuming that is legal in your jurisdiction).

My computer runs a popular Linux distribution, the home partition is encrypted with LUKS, and the swap partition is encrypted with a random key that changes with every reboot. It's a Tor node, but not an end node, because I don't need any more scrutiny from the FBI. I use RequestPolicy and NoScript to minimize the number of unwanted connections made by FireFox--this cuts down on the corporate snooping from the likes of Facebook. It's hardened, but not insanely so--unnecessary services are turned off, I update it daily, and follow all the other usual security precautions. I can't make it impenetrable, but it doesn't have to be low-hanging fruit, either.

a reply to: crazyewok

What I do is begin my day by browsing Youtube for my daily gaming videos to start. During watching them I Google Survivalism related things and randomly switch over to Techno while going out shopping at Wal-Mart/Publix/Local Food Mart in cash if I need something. When back from wherever I go on Ebay/Amazon and buy a few things while Techno is playing. After that I play a game on Steam for a few hours before jumping in the shower to shave and bathe after attending to the throne. I then head into work for 8 hours while a playlist for horrible DarkSydePhil letsplays/tv shows on youtube. I then return to my house before throwing a 8-9 hour Techno music video up while I sleep. Next day? Similar but slightly different things such as Opie and Anthony old bits/audiobooks of classic books/random playlist from a person on my subscriptions.

My goal is to make anyone watching my internet traffic have to expend the effort to figure out when I'm actually at work and when I actually searching for things that interest me/when I just randomly am messing with them.

EDIT: Randomly I throw up porn for 5 hours on mute while looking up random messed up things/browse ATS...

originally posted by: FurvusRexCaeliThey aren't going to use these resources unless they think there's a take to be had. (But they can put together a good model of you from unencrypted metadata.)

Bingo. And in fact, who you are and who you know and who you know knows is definitely a filter. There's no point paying attention to you unless you are or are socially tied to a person of interest. Metadata mining is now such that this is not a bad bet. If you're Joe Blow or Suzy Homemaker, you can download donkey porn all day and no one at an intel agency will look at you. In general.

2. Since they can model your online behavior through your metadata, obscure as much of that as possible. Use Tor and throwaway email accounts.

I would not bet on Tor to be safe.

Don't reuse user names.

Or passwords.

3. NSA stores encrypted traffic for future exploitation. Storage is not very expensive, but it's not unlimited, either.

However, it's going to be fun when HAMR goes mainstream, then they can store LOTS MORE. And they already can store a lot.

Everyone suggesting downloading plaintext donkey porn and making those poor analysts and Ft. Meade watch it all day is wrong. You should download encrypted donkey porn (assuming it's legal in your jurisdiction), as much of it as you can, to fill up that datacenter in Utah. The more donkey porn NSA warehouses, the shorter the retention period for the non-pornographic traffic they acquire.

They store more depending on your distance from people of interest. I would think the more "popular" surveillees have many many terabytes of storage.

My computer runs a popular Linux distribution, the home partition is encrypted with LUKS...

I don't mean to be a tease here, but there's something I can't talk about openly on the forum, although I've kicked it over with Zaphod. That leads me to ask you...do you feel safe because you use Linux? Consider it a sort of informal survey I do. Purely for my own barometer.

a reply to: Bedlam

The operating system of choice used by the Feds is Linux, though they also operate Windows machines ( Oddly enough they seem to prefer Vista ). I wrote a thread a couple of years back citing that they even retconned the International Space Station to run Ubuntu.

Having said that, open source is open source - and I do feel safer using something I ( and many others ) can see the source code for than using a proprietary O/S.

Then again, I keep a Windows partition for running games and the odd program that might not have a good Linux equivalent. I rarely game however, so that partition is rarely used.

originally posted by: Hefficide
a reply to: Bedlam

The operating system of choice used by the Feds is Linux, though they also operate Windows machines ( Oddly enough they seem to prefer Vista ). I wrote a thread a couple of years back citing that they even retconned the International Space Station to run Ubuntu.

We often get specs to use some sort of *ix, although generally it's the Wind River flavor that's Guar-un-teed Gubmint Spec® by the gubmint.

I've got nothing against it, except that it takes me a while to switch between Linux and Winders.

Heck, as one general said, "If you had a team that did nothing but write me Wind River drivers 24/7, I'd pay you just about whatever you wanted", there's a business tip I suppose. Except you'd have to have a SCIF.

Having said that, open source is open source - and I do feel safer using something I ( and many others ) can see the source code for than using a proprietary O/S.

Open source makes you feel safe against prying eyes and fingers, then. Would you agree?

a reply to: crazyewok

I think there is a very important thing that needs to be done so thank you for starting this thread soon it will be too late to do it.

here is my idea.

We can be good neighbours but bad citzens
we can develop methods of secret local communication using symbols and signs
we can develop a language code by which people can send out signals that they are a resister and or that they are seeking to find others similarly disposed.

a reply to: ScientificRailgun
They have done using second life.

How to make things harder for the NSA? Don't use cloud storage, encrypt everything, and stick to vetted open source software. The truth is that nothing you do is secure, a lot of computer security these days simply revolves around the idea of making it such a pain in the ass to break into your information using any given method that there's a simpler way to do it. If they want information on you, you may be able to make it so they can't easily break into your phone and they can't access your computer online but if they want it bad enough they're just going to confiscate your computer and get to the data the same way you do.

originally posted by: JimTSpock
There is far too much internet traffic for the NSA or anyone else to monitor it by person. They don't have the manpower or person power to do it. Apparently internet traffic is filtered through super computers looking for so called key phrases. Which to me seems very stupid as anyone could easily use a code like "my new engine will be ready next week" and the moron NSA or CIA would have no idea WTF.

I've written about it here before, but it's a topic where the explanation is several pages long in order to explain/demonstrate the math involved, it uses a lot of matrix manipulation... you probably learned how to do a large part of it back in high school, you were just never taught how to apply it.

Basically the contents of the message are only a secondary check. Your primary check is in the metadata of the parties involved in the conversation. By recording that you can construct social networks between different addresses. From there you can figure out if the addresses correspond to people in areas of interest, or how many degrees of separation there are between an individual and a known person of interest. Once you've done this you can discard most of the data, only at this point do you actually scan the documents. Contrary to what you believe when you hear the words "key phrase" it's not a list of predefined terms, but rather terms that are used over and over by parties in a conversation, this is language independent because you're just looking for repeated character strings, door holds equal weight with bomb. If you have terms that pop up a lot along with say dates, times, addresses, or locations you can then subject those messages to more specific scrutiny.

I assume the NSA is able to take it to a far higher level than I know how to do but it's not at all magic.

originally posted by: ScientificRailgun
a reply to: crazyewok

I always figured REAL terrorists most likely communicate in MMORPGs (Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games. Think World of Warcraft or Everquest).

They've been tracking chat in MMO's for years now but it took them a long time to catch on. For awhile Lineage 2 was the best money laundering system in the world.

I'm not sure what a VPS and tor will do. Let's say the NSA has to use more resources. Okay, then they allocate it. More government bloat. Is that a win?

Besides, if it becomes too much of an issue, they'll tweak protocol, and maybe that ends up meaning some attacks which would otherwise be foiled are now able to go through. Is that a win?

I'm not concerned about the NSA. Who the hell am I to them? I'm concerned about what my ISP sees, but that's an easy fix with a VPS and streaming media server.