10 ms·

If NSA could subpoena Google, they can (and probably do) do the same with DDG. Not that I don't wish them success, but PRISM is not the right reason to switch

by annnnd 13y ago

If NSA could subpoena Google, they can (and probably do) do the same with DDG. Not that I don't wish them success, but PRISM is not the right reason to switch search engine to them.

theGimp 13y ago
If I recall correctly, DDG claims not to keep a record of your searches, so a subpoena would not provide anyone with much information.
- clicks 13y ago
  Yep, exactly. Now, this makes me wonder: What could be an equivalent implementation for e-mails. An e-mail host that encourages immediate download, totally deletes e-mail contents, deletes logs of any sort, etc. when you delete messages?
  - mbq 13y ago
    You can start your own mail server and make it encrypt all incoming messages with your GPG or SMIME public key. This way NSA will have to collect your old messages from various senders' servers (or the archive made by their sniffers).
    - craigching 13y ago
      That's the second time I've seen someone use GPG and the first time I assumed it was a mistype and they meant "PGP", so I looked it up. Just in case anyone was in the same boat as me: http://gnupg.org http://gnupg.org
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I'd be happy even with a host that allows you to delete e-mails en masse, or auto-delete them after a set period of time, say 180 days, which is how much is necessary to pass before the US government considers e-mail "free for all". You could also try Bitmessage or Retroshare, where e-mails are automatically encrypted, and P2P (no central server).
  - siddboots 13y ago
    > An e-mail host that encourages immediate download, totally deletes e-mail contents, deletes logs of any sort, etc. when you delete messages? That would be POP3.
  - Fice 13y ago
    The first thing to do is to avoid using the most popular email hosts. The world's email should not be centralized around some popular service like Gmail, but should be distributed over many hosts and countries. And we also need distributed search engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_search_engine).
  - BCM43 13y ago
    That's pretty close to what riseup.net does. https://help.riseup.net/en/privacy-policy https://help.riseup.net/en/privacy-policy Of course, you have to trust them to actually do that.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    You mean the way things used to be before GMail showed up? Back when we had mail quotas? Back when 10MB of email storage was the norm?
  - BrainInAJar 13y ago
    Never trust any service you aren't paying for.
- koalaman 13y ago
  Isn't DDG just a search engine aggregator? If they weren't relying on 3rd party search engines, which do record log searches, they'd then probably have to implement a diminished search themselves. A search implementation which I imagine would be severely hampered by a lack of logs. I don't really see how their model is sustainable at scale.
latch 13y ago
DDG logs very litte information...so while NSA can subpoena DDG, there's no data to get. Developers should read "Playing chicken with cat.jpg" [1] which was a response from cperciva [2] to the 37 Signals privacy blunder. It was discussed quite a bit on HN [3] and for me it was a perspective-changing read on privacy. [1] http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484284
- AlexMax 13y ago
  Why bother asking DDG itself when traffic can be intercepted and logged at their ISP?
  - JimJames 13y ago
    IIRC HTTPS would encrypt your data from your ISP.
    - wcchandler 13y ago
      Until PRISM subpoenas DDG and gets their private keys -- after which they can decrypt the SSL traffic.
      - JoshTriplett 13y ago
        Not necessarily possible even with the private keys. If you use an SSL cipher with ephemeral keys, such as the DHE_* or ECDHE_* family of ciphers, then an eavesdropper with a recorded but not MITMed conversation cannot decrypt it even with the server's private SSL key. See http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-secrecy.html http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-se... for example.
        faddotio 13y ago

by annnnd 13y ago

If NSA could subpoena Google, they can (and probably do) do the same with DDG. Not that I don't wish them success, but PRISM is not the right reason to switch search engine to them.

theGimp 13y ago

If I recall correctly, DDG claims not to keep a record of your searches, so a subpoena would not provide anyone with much information.

clicks 13y ago
Yep, exactly. Now, this makes me wonder: What could be an equivalent implementation for e-mails. An e-mail host that encourages immediate download, totally deletes e-mail contents, deletes logs of any sort, etc. when you delete messages?
- mbq 13y ago
  You can start your own mail server and make it encrypt all incoming messages with your GPG or SMIME public key. This way NSA will have to collect your old messages from various senders' servers (or the archive made by their sniffers).
  - craigching 13y ago
    That's the second time I've seen someone use GPG and the first time I assumed it was a mistype and they meant "PGP", so I looked it up. Just in case anyone was in the same boat as me: http://gnupg.org http://gnupg.org
- mtgx 13y ago
  I'd be happy even with a host that allows you to delete e-mails en masse, or auto-delete them after a set period of time, say 180 days, which is how much is necessary to pass before the US government considers e-mail "free for all". You could also try Bitmessage or Retroshare, where e-mails are automatically encrypted, and P2P (no central server).
- siddboots 13y ago
  > An e-mail host that encourages immediate download, totally deletes e-mail contents, deletes logs of any sort, etc. when you delete messages? That would be POP3.
- Fice 13y ago
  The first thing to do is to avoid using the most popular email hosts. The world's email should not be centralized around some popular service like Gmail, but should be distributed over many hosts and countries. And we also need distributed search engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_search_engine).
- BCM43 13y ago
  That's pretty close to what riseup.net does. https://help.riseup.net/en/privacy-policy https://help.riseup.net/en/privacy-policy Of course, you have to trust them to actually do that.
- betterunix 13y ago
  You mean the way things used to be before GMail showed up? Back when we had mail quotas? Back when 10MB of email storage was the norm?
- BrainInAJar 13y ago
  Never trust any service you aren't paying for.
koalaman 13y ago
Isn't DDG just a search engine aggregator? If they weren't relying on 3rd party search engines, which do record log searches, they'd then probably have to implement a diminished search themselves. A search implementation which I imagine would be severely hampered by a lack of logs. I don't really see how their model is sustainable at scale.

latch 13y ago

DDG logs very litte information...so while NSA can subpoena DDG, there's no data to get. Developers should read "Playing chicken with cat.jpg" [1] which was a response from cperciva [2] to the 37 Signals privacy blunder. It was discussed quite a bit on HN [3] and for me it was a perspective-changing read on privacy. [1] http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484284

AlexMax 13y ago
Why bother asking DDG itself when traffic can be intercepted and logged at their ISP?
- JimJames 13y ago
  IIRC HTTPS would encrypt your data from your ISP.
  - wcchandler 13y ago
    Until PRISM subpoenas DDG and gets their private keys -- after which they can decrypt the SSL traffic.
    - JoshTriplett 13y ago
      Not necessarily possible even with the private keys. If you use an SSL cipher with ephemeral keys, such as the DHE_* or ECDHE_* family of ciphers, then an eavesdropper with a recorded but not MITMed conversation cannot decrypt it even with the server's private SSL key. See http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-secrecy.html http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-se... for example.
      - faddotio 13y ago