Meh. It mentions Tor.
Tor was a Navy project.
Emphasis added.
Somehow, I don't think that everyone who has done a Google search for Tor is suddenly being spied on by the NSA. YMMV.
We've been through my opinion about the NSA's mission and interest in people like us before. I won't belabor it, but will say that just in an intuitive level, if you're worried about Big Brother seeing what you're doing, then doing it on a network that requires a physical connection over public infrastructure between you and someone else isn't the smartest thing.
One would have thought that people concerned about security and privacy would be aware of the history of anon.penet.fi remailer and similar things in the 1990s.
That said, it's good the EFF and others are pushing for a stronger bill to clarify what the NSA can and cannot do in the US with greater transparency and accountability.
The LJ piece is scaremongering.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Inception
Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others.
[...]
Staying anonymous
Tor can't solve all anonymity problems. It focuses only on protecting the transport of data. You need to use protocol-specific support software if you don't want the sites you visit to see your identifying information. For example, you can use the Tor Browser Bundle while browsing the web to withhold some information about your computer's configuration.
Also, to protect your anonymity, be smart. Don't provide your name or other revealing information in web forms. Be aware that, like all anonymizing networks that are fast enough for web browsing, Tor does not provide protection against end-to-end timing attacks: If your attacker can watch the traffic coming out of your computer, and also the traffic arriving at your chosen destination, he can use statistical analysis to discover that they are part of the same circuit.
Emphasis added.
Somehow, I don't think that everyone who has done a Google search for Tor is suddenly being spied on by the NSA. YMMV.
We've been through my opinion about the NSA's mission and interest in people like us before. I won't belabor it, but will say that just in an intuitive level, if you're worried about Big Brother seeing what you're doing, then doing it on a network that requires a physical connection over public infrastructure between you and someone else isn't the smartest thing.
One would have thought that people concerned about security and privacy would be aware of the history of anon.penet.fi remailer and similar things in the 1990s.
That said, it's good the EFF and others are pushing for a stronger bill to clarify what the NSA can and cannot do in the US with greater transparency and accountability.
The LJ piece is scaremongering.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
