Slashdot Log In
Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven?
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jun 19, 2008 01:52 PM
from the dear-diary-sven-keeps-reading-my-diary dept.
from the dear-diary-sven-keeps-reading-my-diary dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Swedish government (in its infinite wisdom) has passed a law allowing them to monitor email traffic, a question that I think a lot of people are asking (or at least should be asking) is: 'What can I do to improve my privacy?' The answer is not obvious.
So, what are the best solutions for seamless email encryption, search privacy, etc? What are your experiences with PGP vs GPG vs ...? In this day and age, why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited? Why isn't there a larger movement promoting the use of privacy tools? Also, what is in your opinion the largest privacy concern? Search tracking? Email transfer?
I believe this is an interesting question not only for Swedes, but for everyone. Lots of traffic is passing through Sweden, but more importantly, the Swedish government is not alone in using this type of surveillance."
Reader j1976 writes with a related question: "For most users with email addresses within large organizations, implementing their own email encryption scheme is not feasible, partly because of the technological aspects, but also since users in organizations often do not have administrative access to their workstations. What can an organization do, centrally, to lift the burden of encryption from the users? Are there any transparent schemes for email encryption which could be installed for the organization as a whole?"
Related Stories
[+]
Interviews: Philip Zimmermann and 'Guilt' Over PGP 837 comments
Philip R. Zimmermann, creator of PGP, was quoted in a recent Washington Post article as saying he has been "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt" about the use of PGP by suspected terrorists. Zimmermann says the story was not entirely accurate, and has written a response to it (below) that he hopes will clear things up. He has also consented to a Slashdot interview, so please post any questions you have for him. As usual, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Zimmermann by email, and post his replies verbatim as soon as we get them back.
[+]
Your Rights Online: Sweden On Verge of Passing Sweeping Wiretap Plan 234 comments
An anonymous reader writes "No one seems to have noticed that Sweden is close to passing a far-reaching wiretapping program that would greatly expand the government's spying capabilities by permitting it to monitor all email and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country. If a bill before parliament becomes law, the country's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) will monitor all internet traffic that passes in or out of the country. As the article notes, there's a good chance email traveling from, say, the UK to Finland would be fair game, since it's likely to traverse through Sweden before reaching its final destination. So far, there's been nary a peep from Swedish media about the plan."
[+]
Politics: Wiretapping Law Sparks Rage In Sweden 344 comments
castrox writes "This Wednesday at 9am the Swedish Parliament is voting on a new wiretapping law which would enable the civil agency (FRA — Defense Radio Agency) to snoop on all traffic crossing the Swedish border. E-mail, fax, telephone, web, SMS, etc. 24/7 without any requirement to obtain a court order. Furthermore, by law, the sitting Government will be able to instruct the wiretapping agency on what to look for. It also nullifies anonymity for press tipsters and whistleblowers. Many agencies within Sweden have weighed in on this, with very hefty criticism, e.g. SÄPO (akin to FBI in the US), the Justice Department, ex-employees of FRA, and more. Nonetheless, the ruling party block is supposedly pressuring its members to vote 'yes' to this new proposed law with threats to unseat any dissidents. After massive activity on blogs by ordinary citizens, and street protests, the story has finally been picked up by major Swedish news sources. The result will likely be huge street protests on Wednesday. People have been completely surprised since this law has not gotten any media uptake until very late in the game."
[+]
Your Rights Online: Wiretapping Bill Passes Swedish Parliament, 143 to 138 326 comments
Assar Bruno Boveri writes "Swedish lawmakers came down in favour of a fiercely debated surveillance bill in a vote at the Riksdag on Wednesday evening. Despite some cosmetic changes, Sweden's proposed surveillance law is still a monster, writes Pär Ström from the independent New Welfare Foundation." The Swedish newspaper DN (in Swedish; translations welcome) compares the implications of the proposed law with activities carried out by East Germany's Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (STASI).
Submission: Safeguarding data from the Staatssicherheit by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Secure tunnels (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1.Install gpg4win
2. Thunderbird (or equivilent free email client)
3.) Extensions for email ( case Thunderbird)
4.) make keys
5.) configure programs, get other users pub key etc etc.
This is to much for normal Joe by step 3 or 4 the normal Joe has given up.
If this would be auto
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There, spelled like here (ere), indicates location.
Their, Possessive.
The're, contraction of they are.
GET IT RIGHT!
The're, not a word.
GET IT RIGHT!
SMTP over SSL (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things we need to add is SMTP over SSL. It won't prevent all snooping, but at least between 2 people that trust each other, no snooping happens on the path between.
Re:SMTP over SSL (Score:5, Informative)
I have already implemented SMTPS, IMAPS and POP3S a few years ago. And it's actually not really necessary to buy a certificate if you are doing this for a closed group. Just use OpenSSL and generate your own certificate.
To send emails to others both ends have to buy an email certificate, like from Verisign.
And then some of those who voted for this law thought that encryption is very easy to crack - so easy that it doesn't matter if an email is encrypted or not. The problem with cracking encryption is that you first have to figure out which one it is - and the history is full of encryption techniques.
So in the end - this law will be a good promotor for encryption more than anything else and the monitors can continue to search with Google and not get a bit of useful information from the real criminals and terrorists.
Parent
Re:SMTP over SSL (Score:4, Informative)
We have used a self signed certificate for years and hundreds of other MTAs connect to us and happily set up a encrypted session to transfer mail.
Of course this has issues, by making it harder for the other end to be sure we are who we say we are, but given the alternative is simply to failover and send unencrypted that's not really a major concern.
This is with Postfix. Do any of the other big MTAs actually look to check the certificate is trusted before sending an encrypted message with default TLS settings?
Parent
On NPR... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:On NPR... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I used to be one of those people, too. I started out listening to NPR because I liked classical and jazz music... eventually the news wore on me and I realized that I had been sort of a dick prior. Now I really like NPR news.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Irrational Conservatives think that everyone night like them is going to go to hell and think GOP stands for God's Own Party.
I think that about 80% of people on either side are irrational, and frankly I would rather talk to/be represented by someone I disa
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
ban the rich and tax guns? I'm not sure how that would help....
Re:On NPR... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 4th Amendment was written in response to the Stamp Act. Under the Stamp Act of 1765, all documents in your possession required the kings stamp on them to be legal. You had to by the stamps so this was in effect a tax.. the really ugly part of this law that people do not seem to know is that under the Stamp Act, British soldiers could come into your house any time they wanted to check your documents with what was known as a "writ of assistance". This is in effect a search warrant that British soldiers could write themselves. (It is akin to the NSA's National Security Letter as well..). Upon rummaging through your home, if you could not also prove that you paid taxes on other items such as your furniture or even your tea and your rum, they could arrest you.
Privacy is a property right, you are in your right not to show your property to anyone. This becomes all the more dangerous in a society of data mining and government provided "universal health care" because the government may decide you do not work out enough or your diet is not proper.
Don't think it can't happen.. In Japan the legal wast size is 33.5 inches. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/world/asia/13fat.html?_r=1&em&ex=1213588800&en=b5472f5ba2e31e50&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin [nytimes.com] Anything over that and you may be sent to "re-education". If you deny "re-education" you may even be arrested for being fat.
Parent
Sweden's just being honest about it (Score:5, Interesting)
As the submitter points out, you cannot be sure where your data is being sent on the route between you and your recipient. For all you know your "Dear Mom" email might go through Sweden, the US, the UK, Denmark, Russia and China even though you live within 50 km of eachother.
And your Skype call? Well, that's likely to do the same thing with its routing feature.
Your SSL connection isn't any safer from snooping - not sure about MitM attacks, but if you're just listening in, do you really need to be a MitM?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sweden's just being honest about it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're confused because you think that it is still secrecy that protects the cert. The reason you can trust the CA's root certificate is because the CA's public key is PUBLIC. Anyone can read the cert using the CA's public key, which will decrypt the cert and then you're left with the DoD's public key and their identity (which was supposed to be verified by the C
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sweden's just being honest about it (Score:4, Informative)
I'd be more worried about a super hardware AES cracker that the NSA isn't telling us about.
Parent
Re:Sweden's just being honest about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they can. Or they could just start their own Certificate Authority and get themselves onto the list of trusted authorities that comes installed with browsers or mail software.
But either way they might be reluctant to do the MITM like that because the bogus certificate with the genuine signature could be recorded by the targets and released to the public, causing great embarrassment to the certificate authority and much degradation to the trust of the certificate system.
Parent
Why can't it be simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time ago I suggested someone write a thunderbird extension that was a "one click" encryption setup. On clicking "encrypt" it would create a gpg key > send the pub key to a key server > and if it does not have someone elses key it can suggest thunderbird and itself to that person.
I know this is not a good way to do this, but I can't see people using pgp/gpg it any other way.
Re:Why can't it be simple. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why can't it be simple. (Score:5, Informative)
The "public" in "public key server" means BOTH that the key server is public AND that it is a server for public keys. The most anal-retentive name for it would be a "public public key server".
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography [wikipedia.org] for all the details.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When your dealing with an entity like government
It is our duty to stop them from doing that.. You have a right to privacy, you have a right to not show someone the inside of your house, the inside of your gym locker, the inside of your bank account, o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still waiting on the Patriot act.. it breaks what the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th amendments to the constitution and its law.
Too complex (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS would simplify it and make all of this just happen. I bet that there would be a big gaping hole for the gov't to make use of. Not to mention the security holes that would go along with it as well.
Why not make the government's job easier (Score:5, Funny)
Seamless, no. Pretty darn close, yes. (Score:5, Informative)
However, there are plenty of options if you're willing to do just a little work.
Install GPG or PGP. I use GPG because I can give it away legally to my friends who are less technically saavy and it works on Linux, OS X, and Windows.
Enigmail will integrate nicely into Mozilla's emailer and automate nearly everything once you have the person's public key. It will even notice who your recipient is and automatically pick the correct key.
There is something similar for the OS X Mail application (and I have it installed) but I don't remember the name of the application. It's not as bright as Enigmail and won't figure out who the recepient is automatically and pick the correct key.
FireGPG is a plug-in for FireFox (and it works for "Mozilla" because the web browser _is_ FireFox) that will allow you to use GPG with GMail.
I have an email account in which _all_ of the traffic is encrypted because I use these tools. I never send anything unencrypted on that account.
It's not seamless, but it's not that hard and it is not very intrusive.
I do not know if I should pity you because of your government reading your emails or if I should at least feel happy for you that they are honest enough to admit it (supposedly) before starting. Either way, I doubt things are any better here in the USA.
I find it amusing that the CAPTCHA is "incided", as in this new law inciting a riot.
Well as Phil Z. has said.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The second reason and it's to a lesser extent but still a strong motivator IMO for the lack of secure options for communication are that corporations and governments don't WANT secure applications being adopted. How else can the government spy on you or corporations steal secrets from each other if things are encrypted. This isn't paranoid fantasy land I live in. I don't think any intelligent person today doesn't know especially over the last 8 years that the governments are doing everything they can to spy on you, record you, monitor you and track you. Wether its the TSA, DHS, warrant-less wiretapping whatever we are living in a 1984'esqe society. Seamless and mass adoption of strong encryption and anonymity by the masses would *seriously* curtail their ability to spy on you and find dissidents and evil doers who read catcher in the rye. So IMO these are the two strongest compelling reasons we don't have encryption for the masses yet. Phil's ZFone project is a good step in the right direction though.
PGP/GPG (Score:3, Insightful)
More people need to use these. Operating without a centralized Certificate Authority, GPG really depends on there being sufficient users to establish a web of trust.
I think people (in the US at least) either don't understand the simplicity of sniffing cleartext, or don't think they care. The aggravating part is that GPG can be really easy to use. Apps like Seahorse [gnome.org] make key and keyring management trivial. There's a great Thunderbird plugin [mozdev.org] that makes signing and/or encrypting your mail no harder than it was before. (Yes, I know not everyone uses Linux and Thunderbird, but I trust GPG tools exist for other OSs/email clients)
Given a safe and ubiquitous encryption scheme, I can't think any reasons for sending text/data in the clear. Now all we need is a ubiquitous encryption scheme.
My largest privacy concern? (Score:3, Insightful)
encryption is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope I'm wrong. but the trend is there if you just look.
we already have people saying 'if you are not a terrorist, you should have nothing to hide'. this is just a half step away from saying 'if you DO use encryption, you MUST be hiding something that we should see'.
mark my words.
you may think that you are out-smarting the governments but they have the money, the guns and all the power. and they're NOT about to give this bit of power (over the people) up.
if you encrypt a laptop and pass thru customs, you are FORCED to reveal your password or at the least, 'open' the disk for them to view the contents of. so tell me, how did encryption help here?
don't give me that crap about truecrypt, either. how long will it take before their border people know how to detect this?
Re:encryption is irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
on the "public" portion, have semi-private personal pics, ie. your gf about naked, some sex stories from web and change them like they would be your experiences, love letters same thing, and other personalish data like that.
That "GF" doesn't be even YOUR gf, just grab some package of amateur pics of some website X)
Social engineering!
2nd solution: Public torrent based encrypted "backup" service, goes through the borders easily. Could be somekind of torrent & truecrypt mashup.
Could work if say you want to "backup" 5 gigs, you got to host atleast 10gigs. Gigantic waste of HDD space, Gigantic waste of bandwidth, no live usage, but have good key, and you are golden
In theory could work, anyone attempting something like this?
Parent
Sue the buggers! (Score:3, Informative)
If this is anything like the other PirateBay cases i can't wait to see the legal corrispondance [thepiratebay.org].
Off the record messaging (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plug-ins available for it. OTR has some nice properties including the fact that messages are encrypted, but still deniable. What this means is an eavesdropper cannot read what you write, but at some later time an attacker with an unencrypted copy of the conversation cannot prove that you wrote it.
The goal of the project is to provide a level of security similar to meeting in a private place an d talking. Privacy without a paper trail.
http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ [cypherpunks.ca]
Webmail (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from the usual reason of apathy, we have a (relatively) new, technical problem with securing email: a lot of people are using webmail.
That development was a technological step backwards: moving from specialized client software (mail reader) that understands what it is working on, to a generic tool (web browser). It's hard for a web browser to be able to understand that this piece of an web page is a PGP block, and this part is just UI, and that's assuming that it even has the whole message to work with (i.e. the web server actually sends all the PGP/MIME attachments, instead of presenting a nice webby interface that presents the message parts separately).
I have heard of a Firefox extension (damn, I can't remember the name) that can encrypt and decrypt pieces of web pages or textareas, but that sort of thing is always going to be hacky and cumbersome compared to a real mailreader, so I think that puts us at a disadvantage, compared to the situation ten years ago.
Discourage webmail. Webmail is creating a network effect that is a barrier to securing email.
Part 1 easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy thing to do, really no companies however offer this service
Because... (Score:4, Informative)
why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited?
Several reasons:
Education. Most people that use email don't know what RSA, GPG or PGP is. Let alone the dozens of possible other ciphers available. These people also blissfully wandering around thinking their government is an effective, benevolent provider that keeps them safe so they don't even need encryption or privacy laws. (see: Nanny State). (Instead of the wasteful, corrupt, abusive, ignorant farce that it is.) Polls show that less than 1/4 of Americans know that there is no right to privacy (constitutionaly. The fourth amendment does not provide a right TO privacy; it only provides a right FROM search and seizure under certain conditions.) The rest of them think they have some such right and the government is upholding it, they don't need to encrypt their stuff. Besides [encryption is only for people breaking the law; if you aren't then you have nothing to hide.] lemma: People will not use something if they don't know they have a need for it or if it exists.
Ease of use. Have you ever tried to figured out how to be your own SSL Certificate Authority? or what that even means? I mean Christ, the openssl tool couldn't be any more complicated. Very few people can figure out and feel comfortable with creating, signing and maintaining keys and certificates correctly. Lemma: People will not use something that is confusing.
Guidance. Ever have a certificate/key fail to authenticate? Was the error/info helpful to somebody who doesn't understand the implementation details? No. When your VPN fails to connect or your message fails to decrypt is when I've seen some of the worst feedback presented to a user ever. We need to start practicing an intelligent feedback, one that diagnosis the problem and tells the user specifically what must be changed to solve the problem, not what the problem was. Tell people solutions, they already know a problem exists. Lemma: People will not use something that they cannot correct malfunctions with.
Standardization. PGP is not GPG. Not all mail agents support the same set of encryption capabilities. When sending a message you cannot be sure the recipient can read it no matter what you choose. As the receiver you are going to receive items that are incompatible with you. The result is pressure on ALL users not to use any encryption so that everybody is known to be using the same standard. Lemma: People will not use something [that interacts with all others] unless everybody else is using it.
Transparency. Install this, configure that, click this button, enter your password... People do not want to put this much effort into reading a piece of mail. I'm a security nut and I still hate typing my passwords the fifty times a day that I do. We need to make systems that are as transparent as possible. The user either has to never know they're using it, or they have to be expected to configure it only once and then never have to worry about it. Lemma: People will not use something that annoys them, especially repeatedly.
Too many choices. Which cipher do you want? Do you know why? Would you like RSA or DSA? How many bits? Would you like that in binary or ASCII armor? This detracts from a user's ability to be comfortable with a choice and as such they won't make one. Lemma: People will not use something if they aren't comfortable picking it.
Distribution. For PGP/GPG you need to distribute keys effectively (and transparently). This has not been solved adequately. Lemma: People will not use something that isn't available.
Economy. People do not want to pay for keys and certificates. While Verisign and others provide trusted stores where keys could be distributed the finance changes they enact are prohibitive for normal people. Yes, I know there exists free ones. But they aren't included in the root certificate databases of applications. You can add them but as I said earlier: you just crossed the line of ease of use that a user isn't going to cross
From a Terrorist perspective. (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at how "low-tech" the 9/11 attack was. Fake IDs and boxcutters.
Does anyone really believe that Terrorists are still using email and cellphones(other then bomb triggers)?
My guess is they have gone back to face-to-face MeatMeetings and good old SnailMail(with re-posting networks) in conjunction with simple codewords.
That being said, I seriously doubt all this Security "Theater" is aimed at Terrorists, if, indeed, it is more then theater. My guess is that it is all to head off the "revolution" by average citizens when they snap out of complacency.
Re:Someone please remind me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Someone please remind me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I agree with your comment, just putting in an email, slashdot comment, or even one of my journals can't get the FBI and DEA and whatever anti-prostitution agency to break down my door. Otherwise it seems they already would have, as although I'm no gambler, my slashdot journals often feature potsmoking and hookers. Maybe I should add some blackjack.
However, adultery is NOT against the law. Do you want your wife to find the email you sent to your girlfriend because Sweden seems to be as anti-freedom as America?
(OT but related; why is it legal for me to fuck my congressman's wife, but illegal for me to pay her for it?)
Parent
Re:Someone please remind me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Someone please remind me... (Score:4, Informative)
Linus is from Finland,/a>. [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Someone please remind me... (Score:4, Informative)
True, but from the Swedish speaking minority of Finns.
Parent
Re:Terrorists use encryption! (Score:4, Insightful)
As with any invasive authoritarian law, the government can always present anecdotal examples of it 'working', and so 'justify' the law, despite the fact that it's fundamentally a bad law, and probably not necessary.
Parent
Re:Here is what you do (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Here is what you do (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.
If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they
Re:The fact is the Facebook generation doesn't car (Score:3, Insightful)
Patients have clearly demonstrated by their actions that they don't care at all about their privacy. After all they keep getting sick all the time, and visiting hospitals containing busy emergency rooms full of all kinds of undesirables - and that's just the staff!....
I think the key word, as always, is CHOICE. Do you really propose that socie