The latest piece from our KGB style government started work earlier this week. It records every URL you visit and who you sent your EMails to and, as usual, it’s all blamed on terrorism and/or it’s for the children and no one who was not a terrorist or paedophile would object to it. Read here. Bearing in mind all our telephone records are already stored that about covers everything except snail mail and just plain talking.
Well, just plain talking will be partially covered by the recording of every journey we make so they can build up records of who we meet so that just leaves snail mail which I’m sure will be looked at soon. After all if people can fight wars by sending microdots through the mail then we need to fix this loophole. But that is an issue for later.
This new legislation simply records the URLs, EMail addresses and Internet phone details to allow the KGB our government to build up links of contacts. Although it’s unlikely that Osama will be sending you EMails any day soon it will enable them to link you to almost anyone they want as they search for smoke to throw at the jury. Your friend Tom has a good collection of beheading videos, Dick has some violent porn and Harry, well Harry has some PDFs on how to make your own weapons. You didn’t know that? We don’t believe you and as you have encrypted files on your computer you are in it for child porn or terrorism. No smoke without fire.
This latest legislation doesn’t allow the recording of the contents, well not yet but an amendment can’t be far away, but everything you do is already fed through Carnivore or several new and exciting key word searches. Suspect calls are then fed to an analyst who examines them for contents. They are then kept if of interest or simply dropped and lost if not.
So the suggestion by IanPJ at LPUK to muddy the waters isn’t going to make much difference with this new law but should help tie up a few US analysts and get them complaining. Why US? Well, it’s illegal in the UK for someone to tap your phone etc. without a warrant. Strangely enough exactly the same as in the US. So we tap their phones via GCHQ and they tap our via Fort Meade. That way everyone is happy, except us of course. So it’s still a good idea but needs a bit of refinement. Fixed text like this can be excluded so we need some dynamically generated text that can be automatically added with random keywords to all outgoing EMails. A future project methinks.
Anyway back to the new legislation. I’ve seen a couple of ideas on how to muddy the waters. Such as using Tor via Raedwald. Tor has been around for a while and, until now, used by those whom we all though of as truly paranoid and from the tin hat brigade who are now classed as pioneers. It can be executed via a USB stick so can travel with you wherever you go. There is also this interesting one from Chris containing code which generates random links to just add noise to the database. To be honest I’m not a lover of random links for two reasons, they are usually gibberish and easy to ignore or, if not gibberish, what if it hits Osamas Sharepoint server? Like to see you explain that while 20 plod shoot you full of holes.
Now I seem to remember from my dim and distant past that we used to have systems called anonymous remailers. There were several type and I used to host one myself. Now how these worked is you send a mail to one with the contents encrypted. It decrypted it and pulled out the EMails who to send the message to plus the message contents and some other info. It then sent the message on with the return address as itself. You could chain these together and coupled with delays etc. you could hide linking the source and destination from outsiders. Of course it only works if more than one person uses it. The ones I used have all gone off the web or turned into paid services. Which means they are not really of use. I’ll have a look around and see what is still out there.
It’s funny really. All those years ago the complaints about government oppression were really about nothing. Now it is here and it is so quiet.
In the meantime use steganography. It has the advantages that it can put put in a web page and if a joke or funny picture can be sent anywhere. Just make sure you pick a good key and try not to use a picture from a known source. Take your own pictures and delete the originals.
I’ll be revisiting this subject when I’ve had a good look around.
Update : Had a quick look around and there are still lots of remailers and other handy tools out there. I’ll do a post in a few days with some alternatives and how to use them. I did one a few years ago and it’s not changed that much by the looks of things although it is a new group of people from what I can see. (Last lot probably in Gitmo)
Throwing shoes in the machines
The latest piece from our KGB style government started work earlier this week. It records every URL you visit and who you sent your EMails to and, as usual, it’s all blamed on terrorism and/or it’s for the children and no one who was not a terrorist or paedophile would object to it. Read here. Bearing in mind all our telephone records are already stored that about covers everything except snail mail and just plain talking.
Well, just plain talking will be partially covered by the recording of every journey we make so they can build up records of who we meet so that just leaves snail mail which I’m sure will be looked at soon. After all if people can fight wars by sending microdots through the mail then we need to fix this loophole. But that is an issue for later.
This new legislation simply records the URLs, EMail addresses and Internet phone details to allow the KGB our government to build up links of contacts. Although it’s unlikely that Osama will be sending you EMails any day soon it will enable them to link you to almost anyone they want as they search for smoke to throw at the jury. Your friend Tom has a good collection of beheading videos, Dick has some violent porn and Harry, well Harry has some PDFs on how to make your own weapons. You didn’t know that? We don’t believe you and as you have encrypted files on your computer you are in it for child porn or terrorism. No smoke without fire.
This latest legislation doesn’t allow the recording of the contents, well not yet but an amendment can’t be far away, but everything you do is already fed through Carnivore or several new and exciting key word searches. Suspect calls are then fed to an analyst who examines them for contents. They are then kept if of interest or simply dropped and lost if not.
So the suggestion by IanPJ at LPUK to muddy the waters isn’t going to make much difference with this new law but should help tie up a few US analysts and get them complaining. Why US? Well, it’s illegal in the UK for someone to tap your phone etc. without a warrant. Strangely enough exactly the same as in the US. So we tap their phones via GCHQ and they tap our via Fort Meade. That way everyone is happy, except us of course. So it’s still a good idea but needs a bit of refinement. Fixed text like this can be excluded so we need some dynamically generated text that can be automatically added with random keywords to all outgoing EMails. A future project methinks.
Anyway back to the new legislation. I’ve seen a couple of ideas on how to muddy the waters. Such as using Tor via Raedwald. Tor has been around for a while and, until now, used by those whom we all though of as truly paranoid and from the tin hat brigade who are now classed as pioneers. It can be executed via a USB stick so can travel with you wherever you go. There is also this interesting one from Chris containing code which generates random links to just add noise to the database. To be honest I’m not a lover of random links for two reasons, they are usually gibberish and easy to ignore or, if not gibberish, what if it hits Osamas Sharepoint server? Like to see you explain that while 20 plod shoot you full of holes.
Now I seem to remember from my dim and distant past that we used to have systems called anonymous remailers. There were several type and I used to host one myself. Now how these worked is you send a mail to one with the contents encrypted. It decrypted it and pulled out the EMails who to send the message to plus the message contents and some other info. It then sent the message on with the return address as itself. You could chain these together and coupled with delays etc. you could hide linking the source and destination from outsiders. Of course it only works if more than one person uses it. The ones I used have all gone off the web or turned into paid services. Which means they are not really of use. I’ll have a look around and see what is still out there.
It’s funny really. All those years ago the complaints about government oppression were really about nothing. Now it is here and it is so quiet.
In the meantime use steganography. It has the advantages that it can put put in a web page and if a joke or funny picture can be sent anywhere. Just make sure you pick a good key and try not to use a picture from a known source. Take your own pictures and delete the originals.
I’ll be revisiting this subject when I’ve had a good look around.
Update : Had a quick look around and there are still lots of remailers and other handy tools out there. I’ll do a post in a few days with some alternatives and how to use them. I did one a few years ago and it’s not changed that much by the looks of things although it is a new group of people from what I can see. (Last lot probably in Gitmo)