Re: US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet

[Phil Gardner <phil.gardnerjr () gmail com>]

On 09/09/2013 11:58 AM, Mike A wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 07:12:36PM +0000, Warren Bailey wrote:
> > Anyone else see this coming?
> >
> > US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet
> >
> > http://gu.com/p/3thvv
>
> Yes, long, long ago. I just didn't expect to see it revealed.

This is really only a 'work-around' by the NSA, meaning they get around 
strong encryption by going directly to the source of the unencrypted 
data (eg. google/yahoo/M$ servers), or by potentially posing as a 
"trusted" CA. Like Snowden said back in June, good encryption still 
works. There still isn't enough compute power available to bruteforce 
open-spec encryption, using peer-reviewed, popular open source software. 
I say "popular" because it should be a project in active development 
that has the code monitored and reviewed often (I'm no software 
engineer, so I can't read source code).

PGP still works...assuming the NSA already doesn't have a backdoor in 
your modem/chipset firmware (since there aren't any free firmware/libs 
for any modern SoC that I know of)...or a backdoor trojan on your 
system...or a super secret root kit on your old Fedora Core 2 system 
(swear I don't have any Fedora Core systems left..).

Moral of the story, stay away from the centralized services and 
commercial encryption software. And write your own custom firmware for 
you phone's wifi/cell chip. Start by helping these guys out - 
http://replicant.us/ ;)

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Phil Gardner
PGP Key ID 0xFECC890C
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