Yes, that was part of the report but while they could be most of the information at the backbone level they were not able to get all of it. The second part of it was filling in the missing pieces with alleged "backdoors" to the services servers.
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Apple Releases Statement on Customer Privacy and Law Enforcement Requests for Customer Data
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Yes, that was part of the report but while they could be most of the information at the backbone level they were not able to get all of it. The second part of it was filling in the missing pieces with alleged "backdoors" to the services servers.
Granted, but at the same time ISP fiber tapping is the same concept of telephone wire-tapping. Once they have a court-order or a government policy in place, they can do it.
Exactly. It's the telco's and ISPs who provide the back door into their systems. Plus the NSA probably have equipment that can just listen in on calls (especially mobile calls) without anyone even knowing about it. I'm sure it goes on in many countries around the world.
I remember reading 1984 by George Orwell in school many years ago. It was a nightmare scenario then but it's very much a reality now whether we like it or not.
Well according to the details in the podcast about Prism, it's not a back door per se, its a tap into the raw feed of data at the ISP. They're funneling the data off the main pipe into their own equipment before it gets routed through the ISP to the various destinations of the data.
Would you care if cameras were installed above your bed? In your bathroom? Above your desk?
If you are doing nothing illegal?
Not when they come in with court and gag orders. It's not like they came to the NSA and said "Hey, we have a great idea! Want direct access to our fiber?" Even if they didn't agree with it or even wanted to allow it, what could they do? They could try to fight it in court but it goes right back to the courts that issued the order in the first place.
Public opinion is the only thing that changes anything and that's the reason for the gag orders as well. Mr. ISP CEO thinks it wrong and decides to tell the world? Welcome to 30 years of the "good" life.
Sorry if I missed any intervening posts, but is this likely? It's my understanding that you don't need to do anything particularly sophisticated to intercept traffic in transit on the internet. That's why HTTPS exists to encrypt your communications. The tricky part is decrypting, which although I'm sure is not beyond the NSA, isn't helped at all by using fancy light splitting.
I guess with 100,000 employees and a budget of billions they must have some clever stuff going on behind that smoked glass. I doubt we'll ever know the full truth.
autrefois
macrumors 65816
The right to privacy is a basic human right. If the government doesn't have a legal reason to gather my information, they should leave their hands off of it. And companies like Apple should not facilitate this information gathering nor turn the other way when it happens.
It is surprising how liberals and conservatives have joined together in their outrage at this violation of our rights. This isn't a left versus right issue, it's an issue of basic human dignity.
The government actually admits Prism exists — what we don't know is what they do with the ability to gather all the information, and all the info they do collect. I'm not sure we can believe them about what they do with it since they didn't even reveal the program existed until they were forced to by leaks. So it's all not some crazy conspiracy theory, it's a fact that the program exists. Now we just need to know what they are doing with exactly with the ability to collect all this info and decide as a society (and since it affects non-US citizens, the rest of the world needs to decide as well) what we want to do about it.
Btw, nice pic of you and your cat!
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It is not the same. But it is very similar. And it points out that privacy is something that we all expect and value. Even if/when we are not doing anything illegal.
A situation which would be more apt would be if you wrote a long letter to your girlfriend, baring your soul, and asking her for forgiveness due to your neglecting to remember your anniversary. Would you want it available to your next door neighbor? Reprinted in a local community watch newsletter?
Read by some guy at NSA?
Privacy is important. It was one of the very few rights specifically protected by the Constitution.
Here's a crazy idea - and feel free to shoot me down (or just shoot me) for this:
Since most of us here live in democracies, how about governments give voters the choice? "How much of your privacy are you willing to concede in the interests of your safety?", and let people live by the consequences of their choice.
Of course, the risk is people in relatively low-risk areas (low population density areas, with no major strategic value) might vote for 'more privacy-more risk', while people in likely target areas (high population, near strategic targets) might be more amenable to intrusions into their privacy in order to stay safe.
Since most of us here live in democracies, how about governments give voters the choice? "How much of your privacy are you willing to concede in the interests of your safety?", and let people live by the consequences of their choice.
Of course, the risk is people in relatively low-risk areas (low population density areas, with no major strategic value) might vote for 'more privacy-more risk', while people in likely target areas (high population, near strategic targets) might be more amenable to intrusions into their privacy in order to stay safe.
Here's the thing, SSL encrypts, for example, my Gmail session between my web browser and Google's server. Once I send an email to someone and it passes through Gmail's servers and back out on it's way to whom I've sent it, it's carried over the SMTP protocol which is not encrypted. The email travels unencrypted over the Internet to another ISP and routed to say AOL and then the person whom I sent the email to. The NSA is capturing that email, unencrypted as it's carried via SMTP over the open Internet -after it left Google's servers and before it reached AOL.
The only way to combat this is to encrypt the contents of your message with PGP before clicking send. You must encrypt it locally and ensure the person receiving the email (the intended recipient) has the proper public key to decrypt it. If done this way, the email is still sent unencrypted over the Internet and SMTP, but the contents of the email is still encrypted (because you did it locally with PGP) and thus the NSA cannot read it. They can capture it, but cannot read it.
The fancy light splitting is just a simple method of splitting one signal into two identical signals. One signal goes it's intended route to Google and the second signal goes to an unintended destination, the NSA. Since these communications are done over fiber-optics, it's data sent via light-waves and thus the terms light splitting and Prism, because as we know from high school science, a prism splits light.
Here is a diagram from the EFF showing how it's working.
It's called the patriot act guys.
Even if Apple is court ordered to giVe up sensitive data they cannot by law divulge that they did. Their hands are tied no matter what you think.
Even if Apple is court ordered to giVe up sensitive data they cannot by law divulge that they did. Their hands are tied no matter what you think.
Ok, so all these companies are saying they aren't cooperating with the government outside of official requests. To the extent that the leaked information can be trusted, it gives a timeline for when each company "signed on" to some program. What I haven't heard is what they signed on to, only that they aren't doing very specific things.
I hate this new trend towards "security questions"-- basically it gives access to anyone who knows enough about you. I have plenty of friends who can answer those questions for me, as could any agency with a big enough database. Those questions should be treated as individual passwords, none answered honestly.
I hate this new trend towards "security questions"-- basically it gives access to anyone who knows enough about you. I have plenty of friends who can answer those questions for me, as could any agency with a big enough database. Those questions should be treated as individual passwords, none answered honestly.
Isn't that in a way what we have already. You get the government the majority vote for. I doubt this sort of thing goes on to the same extent in liberal democracies like Sweden. It's only the paranoid countries like the US, UK, China, Russia, etc who feel the need to spy on their own people. We could always vote for liberal anti-big brother parties like the Green Party but we don't.
This is scary stuff, but not entirely surprising. Everything that goes through the internet is public, so it makes sense that it could be monitored at some point (unless encrypted), either by a government entity, or someone else (cyber criminals?).
What's scarier is to think that all this information was probably selectively leaked, and there's a lot more that no one knows about (bring out the paranoids, lol).
Then again, given the amount of information people willingly make public on facebook, twitter, etc., maybe most people don't really care.
What's scarier is to think that all this information was probably selectively leaked, and there's a lot more that no one knows about (bring out the paranoids, lol).
Then again, given the amount of information people willingly make public on facebook, twitter, etc., maybe most people don't really care.
With regards to encrypted data, it's already been proven that Apple can decrypt everything you have on iCloud, as they store the decryption key - anyone with that key can decode the information.
In addition to this, Apple do not (and never have) encrypt your emails or notes.
In a nutshell, if you dont want it out in public, dont store it on a 3rd party service - ever.
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The less said about that law the better really.
In addition to this, Apple do not (and never have) encrypt your emails or notes.
In a nutshell, if you dont want it out in public, dont store it on a 3rd party service - ever.
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The less said about that law the better really.
Assuming for a minute your government (USA) complies and doesn't violate those rights, you are only protected from your government spying on you. Nothing prohibits a third-party, say an ally government, like the UK, from spying on US citizens (unimpeded by the US government) and sharing all that information back with the US government (and vice versa). Then technically your government didn't spy on you but has all the same information as if it did. Both governments end up with all the information they want/need without breaking any local laws.
Either way, it's win/win.
If the the majority of the US doesn't care about its rights, then perhaps it's better they lose them, suffer greatly, discover their value the hard way, then have to fight and die horrible deaths to regain them once again.
"From time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed by the blood of patriots", etc etc etc...
If the the majority of the US doesn't care about its rights, then perhaps it's better they lose them, suffer greatly, discover their value the hard way, then have to fight and die horrible deaths to regain them once again.
"From time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed by the blood of patriots", etc etc etc...
This is absolutely true.
The problem is that it's hard to selectively punish a party for one bad plank in their platform-- you have to take the whole package. So if you're anti-snooping but pro-oil you would have to sacrifice your views on energy to vote Green. And you have to do it en masse, otherwise you wind up splitting your vote and giving power to a third party you dislike even more than the two you're split among.
This makes it a question of immediacy. If I think one party's economic plan is better than the other, and we're in a recession, then snooping probably isn't going to set my vote. Or for the next cycle, or for the next, until something happens that makes it more important than anything else.
From that perspective, finding a way to isolate this issue is probably better.
Of course, I think the main reason it won't change is because not enough people care...
Aside from the obvious privacy intrusion there's another thing to consider.
By the government snooping and gathering and tapping into fibre optics they are actually slowing down the internet. Think about that.
By the government snooping and gathering and tapping into fibre optics they are actually slowing down the internet. Think about that.
Believe it or not ... you missed the whole point. No surveillance of innocent regular citizens is a basic principle of democracy.
