email counter-surveillance

Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
I remember seeing a list of Carnivore keywords that an aspiring hax0r type I knew years ago used to embed in the body of his emails. The idea was that, if every email contained references to bomb making, cocaine smuggling and meth lab construction, the volume of data that required human analysis would render the system useless.

With respect to public key encryption...I've never been 100% certain that there are no in built 'back doors' to decrypting messages. According to an IT professor I had in college who specialized in VoIP data security, a lot of the math involved in developing public key encryption was worked on by the NSA and there are chunks of algorithms buried in there that don't seem to do 'anything'. Didn't Microsoft have an issue whereby they built an NSA key into the encryption methods available on a version of Windows a couple of years ago?

Of course, as long as you're doing nothing wrong, why would you be bothered by that :)
 

rewch

Well-known member
used to use hushmail until they started premium gibberish & charging for various services & got bored with it... did send a few keyword stuffed e-mails along the lines of the hax0r type that mr soup used to know used... it was pre the general level of security agency hysteria that seems the norm these days & definitely before sept. 11th... may not be very sensible now in terms of general well-being, but i like the general orneriness of that approach...

not very keen on that 'if you're doing nothing wrong' line though... eventually the line will be drawn in terms of what one thinks, what one might do or even what one might have the genetic potential to do...
 

bassnation

the abyss
rewch said:
used to use hushmail until they started premium gibberish & charging for various services & got bored with it... did send a few keyword stuffed e-mails along the lines of the hax0r type that mr soup used to know used... it was pre the general level of security agency hysteria that seems the norm these days & definitely before sept. 11th... may not be very sensible now in terms of general well-being, but i like the general orneriness of that approach...

not very keen on that 'if you're doing nothing wrong' line though... eventually the line will be drawn in terms of what one thinks, what one might do or even what one might have the genetic potential to do...

this is already happening in the uk - control orders on people who haven't committed a crime (or at least it can't be proved that they have or are planning to).

also in a recent speech blair talked about knowing when families are going to be a "problem" from the time the first child is born - which i think is absolutely outrageous. talk about pre-determinism. kick the fuckers out and do everything you can to hinder their prying, spying and mind control.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
bassnation said:
this is already happening in the uk - control orders on people who haven't committed a crime (or at least it can't be proved that they have or are planning to).

also in a recent speech blair talked about knowing when families are going to be a "problem" from the time the first child is born - which i think is absolutely outrageous. talk about pre-determinism. kick the fuckers out and do everything you can to hinder their prying, spying and mind control.

This brought to mind a scene I witnessed outside pubs last sunday in Norwich. The england game had just finished, and there were loads of police around, standing about with handycams, motionless, just filming everyone who spilled out of the numerous pubs on this particular street. I assumed it must be either to record evidence in case a future crime occurred, or to intimidate people into behaving, though I suppose there could have been some other reason. I mean, I know its standard practice at political protests, but this seemed especially sinister to me. Well, not that filming at protests isn't, it's just that I've grown accustomed to it. I guess that just underscores how insidious these processes can be.

Does this kind of surevillance happen alot at football games nowadays?
 

Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
rewch said:
not very keen on that 'if you're doing nothing wrong' line though... eventually the line will be drawn in terms of what one thinks, what one might do or even what one might have the genetic potential to do...

Agreed 100% actually...shoulda made it clearer was joking with that.

What really bothers me (and you hit on this with the 'pre-9/11' bit) is the extent to which things have reached a point where a lot of people are not as outraged as they used to be about their activities being monitored by governments. Is the constant fear-mongering propaganda getting to us or did we just get used to it?
 
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