NSA Targets Tor Administrators and People Searching for Privacy Tools
July 3rd, 2014More: NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious
Via: ndr.de:
The investigation discloses the following:
Two servers in Germany – in Berlin and Nuremberg – are under surveillance by the NSA.
Merely searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools outlined in the XKeyscore rules causes the NSA to mark and track the IP address of the person doing the search. Not only are German privacy software users tracked, but the source code shows that privacy software users worldwide are tracked by the NSA.
Among the NSA’s targets is the Tor network funded primarily by the US government to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states.
The XKeyscore rules reveal that the NSA tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called “the Linux Journal – the Original Magazine of the Linux Community”, and calls it an “extremist forum”.
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I have no idea how much of this is real, but I’m posting it so 300 of you don’t submit it.
Via: Gigaom:
An investigation by the German broadcasters ARD and WDR has apparently demonstrated the targeting by the NSA of a German student called Sebastian Hahn, who runs a node on the anonymization network Tor. It has also shown that anyone searching for “privacy-enhancing software tools” online may be marked for surveillance.
Tor (“The Onion Router”) works by bouncing traffic off a series of servers so that it’s near-impossible to trace who’s browsing what. It’s partly funded by the U.S. Department of State because it’s handy for dissidents in repressive regimes, but Edward Snowden’s leaks already showed last year that the NSA has been targeting Tor because it believes terrorists also use it.
The German reports on Thursday were based on source code related to XKeyscore, believed to be the front-end system for searching data held by the NSA and its partners. This code includes the IP address for a server run by Hahn, who explained to me by email:
“I saw some source code which appears to belong to an XKeyscore plugin.The IP address was embedded in that source code. We’re not talking about the main tool, just a plugin.”
Hahn, who has been involved in the Tor project for around 6 years, runs one of the Tor “directory authorities”, which list all the roughly 5,000 Tor servers out there. These authorities keep users’ Tor clients up to date. Thursday’s reports say it’s not known whether Hahn’s server was monitored by the NSA as such, or by the agency’s German partners.
The source code includes the IP address of another German target too, according to the reports – the Chaos Computer Club. The CCC is Europe’s oldest and largest hacker collective, and it runs communications services for activists (which is why it’s one of several communications providers suing the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ over surveillance).
Meanwhile, according to an English-language ARD article published later on Thursday — and partly written by members of the Tor project — the NSA “tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
The XKeyscore plugin source code reportedly also includes a reference in a comment column to Tor users being “extremists” and, worryingly, it also suggests that people may be marked for surveillance by the NSA simply by visiting the Tor site or searching for the Tor-connected “incognito” operating system Tails, the reports claimed. The website LinuxJournal is also targeted and referred to as an “extremist forum.”
This is all just getting insane, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But we all knew this anyway. Surveilled either way, so we might as well bat down the hatches. It’ll all be getting worse and going global…global government surveillance, from FATCA to GATCA (global tax), etc…nothing we can do but mitigate the tyranny and prepare locally and individually.
Seems silly to post this comment, but I learned
last week or so that when you go to YouTube under the DuckDuckgo search engine, Google does not allow access to youtube anonymously. Well then, I guess I won’t be going to youtube much anymore.
These spying freaks are everywhere. Like roaches,
biting ants, fleas, ticks, Japanese beetles, mosquitoes, and saving the best for last, STINK BUGS. Imported from China. Have a nice day.