More Sunlight on NSA's Unquenchable Thirst for Backdoor Access to All of Our Encrypted Info

[bigtree]

Matthew Keys ?@MatthewKeysLive 15m
The NSA scandal worsens - http://nyti.ms/1aTx5VN pic.twitter.com/Uv6nS9r918 (NYT)


____ In recent months, the documents disclosed by Mr. Snowden have described the N.S.A.’s reach in scooping up vast amounts of communications around the world. The encryption documents now show, in striking detail, how the agency works to ensure that it is actually able to read the information it collects.

The agency’s success in defeating many of the privacy protections offered by encryption does not change the rules that prohibit the deliberate targeting of Americans’ e-mails or phone calls without a warrant. But it shows that the agency, which was sharply rebuked by a federal judge in 2011 for violating the rules and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, cannot necessarily be restrained by privacy technology. N.S.A. rules permit the agency to store any encrypted communication, domestic or foreign, for as long as the agency is trying to decrypt it or analyze its technical features . . .

. . . Some of the agency’s most intensive efforts have focused on the encryption in universal use in the United States, including Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL; virtual private networks, or VPNs; and the protection used on fourth-generation, or 4G, smartphones. Many Americans, often without realizing it, rely on such protection every time they send an e-mail, buy something online, consult with colleagues via their company’s computer network, or use a phone or a tablet on a 4G network.

For at least three years, one document says, GCHQ, almost certainly in collaboration with the N.S.A., has been looking for ways into protected traffic of popular Internet companies: Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft’s Hotmail. By 2012, GCHQ had developed “new access opportunities” into Google’s systems, according to the document . . .


read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130906&_r=1&

[longship]

1. Too bad, NSA.

I use Gnu Privacy Guard on Linux.

No back doors and it's still uncrackable.