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Shakeeb Rahmati |
These are dark times for online privacy.
The U.S. government is spying on its own citizens' online
activities. The FBI was able to suss out and shut down the anonymous black
market Silk Road. Even the Internet-within-the-Internet called the Tor network
-- the most secretive way to browse the Web -- is being monitored by the
National Security Agency.
Strong passwords and encrypted email services were never
truly enough to protect users' online privacy. But recent revelations about
government surveillance even throw into doubt the effectiveness of far-out
measures of data encryption used by the most careful people surfing the Web.
Silk Road serves as a prime example. It operated as a hidden
service on Tor, an anonymizing tool that helps users and sites keep their
identities secret. Everyone buying and selling drugs, weapons and other illicit
items on the site thought they couldn't be tracked.
But federal agents managed to track down a computer server
Silk Road used, and the FBI monitored more than 1.2 million private
communications on the site.
Related story: Facebook kills search privacy setting
If online privacy can't stand up to good, old-fashioned
police work, it doesn't stand a chance against some of the more potent tools
the government uses:
The NSA figured out how to track down who's who on Tor by
exploiting weaknesses in Web browsers, according to documents former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden leaked to The Guardian -- a bug that was only
recently fixed.
PRISM, the government's hush-hush mass data collection
program, lets even low-level NSA analysts access email, chats and Internet
phone calls.
The U.S. government issues frequent, secret demands for
customer data from telecommunications companies.
It's no wonder, then, that many have declared the death of
online privacy.
Shopping for LSD and AK-47s online
Shopping for LSD and AK-47s online
"Unfortunately, online anonymity is already dead,"
said Ladar Levison, founder of e-mail service LavaBit that closed its doors in
the wake of the NSA's PRISM controversy. "It takes a lot more effort and
skill than most have in order to keep your anonymity today."
Remaining unrecognizable and keeping conversations private
online is immensely important. It's not just an issue for civil libertarians --
online privacy is crucial for crime victims, whistleblowers, dissidents and
corporations trying to keep secret the latest high-tech research.
The result has been tantamount to a cryptographic arms race.
On one side are independent programmers usually writing free software. On the
other are a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies supported by a $52.6 billion black
budget.
And while some claim unbreakable encryption is coming,
large-scale availability is still years away.
"It's an open question how much protection Tor or any
other existing anonymous communications tool provides against the NSA's
large-scale Internet surveillance," said Roger Dingledine, Tor's lead
developer.
Still, Aleecia McDonald, a privacy expert at Stanford
University's Center for Internet & Society, said there's still a benefit to
guarding yourself with a network like Tor. At least you make it harder to get
spied on.
"The NSA has to attack Tor users one by one, not en
masse as they do with non-Tor users," she said. To top of page
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