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This seems like a good place to say that I strongly recommend Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34220713-surveillance

by xster 5y ago

This seems like a good place to say that I strongly recommend Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34220713-surveillance-valley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34220713-surveillance-va...) where he suggests that all of this is working as intended, going all the way back to the military counter-insurgency roots of the arpanet first in places like Vietnam, and then back home in anti-war and leftist movements. The contemporary themes that are relevant are the fact that current privacy movements like Tor, Signal, OTF, BBG are fundamentally military funded and survive on government contracts. It distracts from the needed political discourse into a technology one where "encryption is the great equalizer" and everyone can resist big brother in their own way on the platforms the government has built. Encryption does exist, but it also distracts from other vectors like vulnerabilities (that led to Ulbricht getting caught), what services you would e2e connect to, how you get the clients to connect to those services, what store can push binaries for said clients etc.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"are the fact that current privacy movements like Tor, Signal, OTF, BBG are fundamentally military funded and survive on government contracts." Are those "facts" avaiable for investigating, without having to buy the book? (that Tor is partly US administration funded is known, but Signal? And what is OTF and BGG?)
- xster 5y ago
  https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-whisper-systems/ https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-wh... Funded by Open Technology Fund (OTF) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund Which is funded by Radio Free Asia (RFA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia. It had a few reboots but was created as a CIA program in 1951 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia_(Committee_for_a_Free_Asia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia_(Committee_for...) to blast shortwaves into China from Manilla to try to overthrow the Chinese government. Rebooted more recently since the advent of the great firewall of China.
  - evgen 5y ago
    Wow, that is so thin it is transparent. If this is the sort of 'proof' that we are going to find then I am glad you posted the ref here so that I could add yet another kook to the list of those whose privacy/security rantings and books I can ignore. The biggest danger to long-term privacy projects is not the risk of taking advantage of an opportune partnership with a government agency when incentives align, it is conspiracy nutjobs poisoning the well with their paranoia and delusions.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    And Signal? The main tool, used for private communication?
adamfisk 5y ago
Yasha Levine is a conspiracy theorist hack. There’s really no other way to say it. His narrative is attractive to a left leaning audience with shallow knowledge in this area, but the reality is that without publicly funded software like Tor, Signal, OTF, and my own Lantern, our world would be more fully saturated with corporate control of the internet. We need more public funding for open source software (with public security audits, mind you), not less. Without them, we’d basically be left with Wikipedia as the only popular entity on the internet outside of corporate control. All of these projects are more properly grouped with government funding in other spheres, such as the BBC or PBS in media, than they are with the surveillance state or the NSA. Levine overlooks basic details, such as reproducible builds, that quickly collapse the house of cards that is his narrative. He tries to paint them all with the NSA brush, when, in fact, they’re simply projects that have historically received some of their funding from the government while fulfilling missions with extraordinary humanitarian benefits. Levine’s own knowledge and experience in this area is shallow. Look elsewhere.
- xster 5y ago
  I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm not sure your statement is in disagreement with mine either? I don't think he's saying less OSS is better or anything dogmatic? All he's saying is that using Tor/Signal shouldn't be the end all be all of your surveillance concerns. > would be more fully saturated with corporate control of the internet You might disagree. His point was that the "corporate controllers of the internet" support projects like Tor because A) it gives a (somewhat ineffective) channel for people to focus on rather than political recourses and B) there's no real threat to the corporate model. What would you do in this e2e encrypted internet without corporate services? > such as reproducible builds Seems like a tangential point. You can have an untampered copy of a client with a vulnerability. > funding from the government while fulfilling missions with extraordinary humanitarian benefits I don't think this is in disagreement with anything either
- pphysch 5y ago
  This comment is an incredibly naive attempt at a smear. > Without them, we’d basically be left with Wikipedia as the only popular entity on the internet outside of corporate control. Wikipedia is absolutely not "outside of corporate control". It is trivially astroturfed to advance special interests. > All of these projects are more properly grouped with government funding in other spheres, such as the BBC or PBS in media Both BBC and PBS routinely publish outright disinformation to advance the special interests of their corporate/government clients, including the intelligence community. For example, look at PBS Frontline's ridiculous puff piece for the violent extremist group HTS last year. > Levine overlooks basic details, such as reproducible builds Reproducible builds are also easily circumvented by selectively deploying backdoors and other malware, based on IP or other fingerprints. If there are good reasons to dispute Levine's investigative journalism, they're not here.
suetoniusp 5y ago
Thank you. I never knew the source of the ridiculous theory that the internet sprang from spying attempts on the Vietnamese. I am always looking for keywords to filter conspiracy weirdos. Yasha Levine added
tptacek 5y ago
Signal isn't funded by the military, by OTF/BBG, or any branch of the USG government. People who claim otherwise are confused (deeply) about a program OTF ran that sponsored third-party security reviews and development projects (summer-of-code style), none of which was mediated through OTF --- it was just a bucket of money. You should be extremely skeptical about people who bring OTF/BBG up in these discussions. I have complicated feelings about Tor stemming mostly from culture and effectiveness concerns and would push back on claims that it's co-opted by the Navy or corporate interests, but at least I can see a clear (if silly) line connecting Tor to these supposed conflicts of interest.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  As I understand it the technology behind Tor is strengthened by an arms race. You want several different well-funded entities running nodes, because that makes the service better for everybody. Even if some of those entities are hostile they still help unless one entity controls a large portion of interior nodes and even then you're only giving metadata to that single entity (whichever it is) by using Tor, not anybody else - which is better than you're going to do with alternative technologies.
  - yownie 5y ago
    This analogy unfortunately cuts both ways, if you've got technology that undermines the majority government / power structure in a secure fashion, you'll always have the ability to come in as a intelligence agency and foment an insurgency movement. Which also unfortunately points to them having exploits no one has discovered yet in said technology tools. They can still maintain generalized situational control via additional superiority vectors(MASINT, HUMINT, GEOINT, OSINT, FININT etc.)
- CyanBird 5y ago
  > Signal isn't funded by the military Correct, it is not funded by "the military", but this is incorrect > any branch of the USG government Because Signal/TextSecure received considerable amounts of seed capital from Radio Free Asia which is a CIA spinoff with the explicit aim to fund the development of the cryptography at grass roots level, not per se to have full control of it like NSA would have done, but because having strong cryptography on such platforms (Telegram might be other) is highly effective against perceived US enemies like well... Iran, or Syria, and to allow their assets/agents to communicate more easily while abroad without bulky extra proprietary phones or software All of that above is mentioned at length on Surveillance Valley btw
b8 5y ago
Ulbricht was caught via poor OPSEC and not via a Firefox/Tor 0day afaik. Though there was/is speculation that a Firefox/Tor 0day was used to bring down some Tor markets and possibly to locate the Silk Road's server. Silk Road 2.0 was brought down in like a few months, which could indicate such a 0day existed. Or that it was ran by some former Silk Road staff members who got doxed when Silk Road 1.0 was shut down.
- ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
  Ulbricht was caught because an FBI agent, who would read things slowly and twice, recognized these 4 letters : heyy. That's how Ulbricht sometimes spelled hey, and the agent had seen that particular spelling before in his investigation, in an email from Ulbrict’s student email address. Nick Bilton's book “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road” is a great read, highly recommended.
  - unobatbayar 5y ago
    That's what they want you to think. He was caught because; Nothing can match against the surveillance arsenal of the NSA.
    - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
      That's not what I think, that's what Nick Bilton thinks. The quality of his book makes me partial to his thesis, of course, but NSA conspiracy blah adds nothing. Also, lots more went into catching him than just heyy, but that was the lucky break that had him caught. Now he shares a prison with Dr. Unabomber Kazinsky.
      - twobitshifter 5y ago
        That could be the story but since parallel construction is routinely used to hide the existence of surveillance tools and back doors it’s not unreasonable to doubt it. I thought I had heard it was stackoverflow, is that looped in somehow?
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Where is any evidence of Tor being a military surveillance project? I find it hard to believe an open source project like this has been infiltrated. Yes, there is suspicion some ECC curves are compromised, but only the ones provided by NIST. I'd really like to see evidence of Tor.
- QuarterReptile 5y ago
  The seed for that line of thinking is the fact that a US Navy lab built it.[0] Having said that, I believe that's the only basis and is a far cry from making the theory convincing or even probable. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Wow, I feel like an idiot. All this time I had no idea the Navy built it, when a simple Wiki search would have pointed that out. Thanks!
    - adamfisk 5y ago
      “The Navy built it” is a bit of an exaggeration. Paul Syverson did early work on it at the Naval Research Lab, and Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson added to the collaboration at approximately the same time, with neither having anything to do with the Navy. That’s the extent of the military connection - some relationship in the first year or so of an 18 year or so project.
- yownie 5y ago
  There's a been a suspiciously downplayed number of ephemeral hidden services that get raided / internationally taken down on the Tor network for it to be mere circumstance. No one tries to take notice since they're hosting the worst content on the internet regularly.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Could as well be insiders though and operations that were planned for years.
nova22033 5y ago
Did you even click on the link? Signal gives away NOTHING.

by xster 5y ago

hutzlibu 5y ago

"are the fact that current privacy movements like Tor, Signal, OTF, BBG are fundamentally military funded and survive on government contracts." Are those "facts" avaiable for investigating, without having to buy the book? (that Tor is partly US administration funded is known, but Signal? And what is OTF and BGG?)

xster 5y ago
https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-whisper-systems/ https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-wh... Funded by Open Technology Fund (OTF) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Technology_Fund Which is funded by Radio Free Asia (RFA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia. It had a few reboots but was created as a CIA program in 1951 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia_(Committee_for_a_Free_Asia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia_(Committee_for...) to blast shortwaves into China from Manilla to try to overthrow the Chinese government. Rebooted more recently since the advent of the great firewall of China.
- evgen 5y ago
  Wow, that is so thin it is transparent. If this is the sort of 'proof' that we are going to find then I am glad you posted the ref here so that I could add yet another kook to the list of those whose privacy/security rantings and books I can ignore. The biggest danger to long-term privacy projects is not the risk of taking advantage of an opportune partnership with a government agency when incentives align, it is conspiracy nutjobs poisoning the well with their paranoia and delusions.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  And Signal? The main tool, used for private communication?

adamfisk 5y ago

Yasha Levine is a conspiracy theorist hack. There’s really no other way to say it. His narrative is attractive to a left leaning audience with shallow knowledge in this area, but the reality is that without publicly funded software like Tor, Signal, OTF, and my own Lantern, our world would be more fully saturated with corporate control of the internet. We need more public funding for open source software (with public security audits, mind you), not less. Without them, we’d basically be left with Wikipedia as the only popular entity on the internet outside of corporate control. All of these projects are more properly grouped with government funding in other spheres, such as the BBC or PBS in media, than they are with the surveillance state or the NSA. Levine overlooks basic details, such as reproducible builds, that quickly collapse the house of cards that is his narrative. He tries to paint them all with the NSA brush, when, in fact, they’re simply projects that have historically received some of their funding from the government while fulfilling missions with extraordinary humanitarian benefits. Levine’s own knowledge and experience in this area is shallow. Look elsewhere.

xster 5y ago
I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm not sure your statement is in disagreement with mine either? I don't think he's saying less OSS is better or anything dogmatic? All he's saying is that using Tor/Signal shouldn't be the end all be all of your surveillance concerns. > would be more fully saturated with corporate control of the internet You might disagree. His point was that the "corporate controllers of the internet" support projects like Tor because A) it gives a (somewhat ineffective) channel for people to focus on rather than political recourses and B) there's no real threat to the corporate model. What would you do in this e2e encrypted internet without corporate services? > such as reproducible builds Seems like a tangential point. You can have an untampered copy of a client with a vulnerability. > funding from the government while fulfilling missions with extraordinary humanitarian benefits I don't think this is in disagreement with anything either
pphysch 5y ago
This comment is an incredibly naive attempt at a smear. > Without them, we’d basically be left with Wikipedia as the only popular entity on the internet outside of corporate control. Wikipedia is absolutely not "outside of corporate control". It is trivially astroturfed to advance special interests. > All of these projects are more properly grouped with government funding in other spheres, such as the BBC or PBS in media Both BBC and PBS routinely publish outright disinformation to advance the special interests of their corporate/government clients, including the intelligence community. For example, look at PBS Frontline's ridiculous puff piece for the violent extremist group HTS last year. > Levine overlooks basic details, such as reproducible builds Reproducible builds are also easily circumvented by selectively deploying backdoors and other malware, based on IP or other fingerprints. If there are good reasons to dispute Levine's investigative journalism, they're not here.

suetoniusp 5y ago

Thank you. I never knew the source of the ridiculous theory that the internet sprang from spying attempts on the Vietnamese. I am always looking for keywords to filter conspiracy weirdos. Yasha Levine added

tptacek 5y ago

Signal isn't funded by the military, by OTF/BBG, or any branch of the USG government. People who claim otherwise are confused (deeply) about a program OTF ran that sponsored third-party security reviews and development projects (summer-of-code style), none of which was mediated through OTF --- it was just a bucket of money. You should be extremely skeptical about people who bring OTF/BBG up in these discussions. I have complicated feelings about Tor stemming mostly from culture and effectiveness concerns and would push back on claims that it's co-opted by the Navy or corporate interests, but at least I can see a clear (if silly) line connecting Tor to these supposed conflicts of interest.

tialaramex 5y ago
As I understand it the technology behind Tor is strengthened by an arms race. You want several different well-funded entities running nodes, because that makes the service better for everybody. Even if some of those entities are hostile they still help unless one entity controls a large portion of interior nodes and even then you're only giving metadata to that single entity (whichever it is) by using Tor, not anybody else - which is better than you're going to do with alternative technologies.
- yownie 5y ago
  This analogy unfortunately cuts both ways, if you've got technology that undermines the majority government / power structure in a secure fashion, you'll always have the ability to come in as a intelligence agency and foment an insurgency movement. Which also unfortunately points to them having exploits no one has discovered yet in said technology tools. They can still maintain generalized situational control via additional superiority vectors(MASINT, HUMINT, GEOINT, OSINT, FININT etc.)
CyanBird 5y ago
> Signal isn't funded by the military Correct, it is not funded by "the military", but this is incorrect > any branch of the USG government Because Signal/TextSecure received considerable amounts of seed capital from Radio Free Asia which is a CIA spinoff with the explicit aim to fund the development of the cryptography at grass roots level, not per se to have full control of it like NSA would have done, but because having strong cryptography on such platforms (Telegram might be other) is highly effective against perceived US enemies like well... Iran, or Syria, and to allow their assets/agents to communicate more easily while abroad without bulky extra proprietary phones or software All of that above is mentioned at length on Surveillance Valley btw

b8 5y ago

Ulbricht was caught via poor OPSEC and not via a Firefox/Tor 0day afaik. Though there was/is speculation that a Firefox/Tor 0day was used to bring down some Tor markets and possibly to locate the Silk Road's server. Silk Road 2.0 was brought down in like a few months, which could indicate such a 0day existed. Or that it was ran by some former Silk Road staff members who got doxed when Silk Road 1.0 was shut down.

ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
Ulbricht was caught because an FBI agent, who would read things slowly and twice, recognized these 4 letters : heyy. That's how Ulbricht sometimes spelled hey, and the agent had seen that particular spelling before in his investigation, in an email from Ulbrict’s student email address. Nick Bilton's book “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road” is a great read, highly recommended.
- unobatbayar 5y ago
  That's what they want you to think. He was caught because; Nothing can match against the surveillance arsenal of the NSA.
  - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
    That's not what I think, that's what Nick Bilton thinks. The quality of his book makes me partial to his thesis, of course, but NSA conspiracy blah adds nothing. Also, lots more went into catching him than just heyy, but that was the lucky break that had him caught. Now he shares a prison with Dr. Unabomber Kazinsky.
    - twobitshifter 5y ago
      That could be the story but since parallel construction is routinely used to hide the existence of surveillance tools and back doors it’s not unreasonable to doubt it. I thought I had heard it was stackoverflow, is that looped in somehow?

SavantIdiot 5y ago

Where is any evidence of Tor being a military surveillance project? I find it hard to believe an open source project like this has been infiltrated. Yes, there is suspicion some ECC curves are compromised, but only the ones provided by NIST. I'd really like to see evidence of Tor.

QuarterReptile 5y ago
The seed for that line of thinking is the fact that a US Navy lab built it.[0] Having said that, I believe that's the only basis and is a far cry from making the theory convincing or even probable. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Wow, I feel like an idiot. All this time I had no idea the Navy built it, when a simple Wiki search would have pointed that out. Thanks!
  - adamfisk 5y ago
    “The Navy built it” is a bit of an exaggeration. Paul Syverson did early work on it at the Naval Research Lab, and Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson added to the collaboration at approximately the same time, with neither having anything to do with the Navy. That’s the extent of the military connection - some relationship in the first year or so of an 18 year or so project.
yownie 5y ago
There's a been a suspiciously downplayed number of ephemeral hidden services that get raided / internationally taken down on the Tor network for it to be mere circumstance. No one tries to take notice since they're hosting the worst content on the internet regularly.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Could as well be insiders though and operations that were planned for years.

nova22033 5y ago

Did you even click on the link? Signal gives away NOTHING.