10 ms·

DuckDuckGo: illusion of privacy?

247 points by ziodave 13y ago

blahbl4hblah 13y ago
I'm surprised by how many world class super spy/hacker types there are on HN...who knew that, besides just generally being snarky about shit that you half understand, that you had so many secrets to protect?
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  I'm surprised you don't recognize the principle of the matter. There was an article posted a while back about "in a world of perfect surveillance, legal change would be impossible". Much of social progress came about because people could communicate in secret.
ziodave 13y ago
If what's written in this article is true, that basically means that even hosting a server in the US is basically a breach in privacy. Do you think this is reliable information?
- claudius 13y ago
  What makes you think that hosting a server in one of the world’s oldest democracies, the country among the first to have a written constitution and a strong bill of rights, the land of the free, would not be a breach of privacy? Oh wait…
  - nine_k 13y ago
    One of the world's oldest democracies? You mean Switzerland? Well, hosting a server there might be a good idea.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Iceland does Switzerland even better.
    - claudius 13y ago
      ‘one’ is still an indefinite, rather than definite, article, and the USA are certainly one of the older, still-existing democracies (even though, of course, there are even older ones).
- gurkendoktor 13y ago
  You might be surprised how many non-US citizens will agree with that statement.
brianwillis 13y ago
Before drawing any conclusions from this, I recommend reading Gabriel Weinberg's response in the comment section. I felt considerably better after reading it.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Yeah, but I still agree with the article. If the information flows via machines located in the US, NSA can get to the information at several levels. Then it also depends how much of the law, NSA makes for itself. Like any HN reader that lived through dictatorship governments can attest, what the law says and the secret services do, doesn't need to be in sync. And opposing them, well, there are plenty of ways to change people's mind that the right way is to help them. If this is the direction the government will carry on doing, good luck opposing them just by switching providers, without doing anything more active.
  - dev1n 13y ago
    Looks like I'm moving to iceland.
- cuillevel3 13y ago
  Yeah, his response made me laugh out loud for like 30 seconds straight. How uninformed and naiv can one CEO be? Did he hear about the secret courts at all?
- DannyBee 13y ago
  I felt considerably worse, because he takes a very naive view of the legal realm. Let me expand a bit: I don't think Gabriel is lying/dumb/whatever. However, the statement given essentially comes out to "If we had to, we would fight the good fight and we very strongly believe we would win". I'm all in favor of fighting as hard as you can against broad/illegal/user harmful orders/etc. But at some point, you will lose, even with the law and moral justice on your side. This is a certainty. Google has lost. Yahoo has lost. Twitter has lost. Microsoft has lost. Contrary to the belief that they are cooperative, they don't want anything to do with anything, and fought with more resources and energy than DDG probably can muster (again, no offense to Gabriel). Let's ignore for a second whether they have any data to give or not. The point is that at some time in the future you will not just lose temporarily, you will lose in a way that you have to make a choice because yourself/your business/your livelihood and your users privacy. Believing otherwise makes you naive in my eyes.
cinquemb 13y ago
"Option 2 Many smaller internet companies, including DuckDuckGo, do not operate their own data-center, but instead are “hosted” in another provider’s datacenter. In DuckDuckGo’s case, they are hosted by Verizon Internet Services. We’ve all learned about the cozy relationship between the NSA and Verizon, it is quite imaginable that Verizon would simply give them access to a DuckDuckGo server, or the load-balancer which is likely owned and operated by Verizon and upon which the SSL decryption key is installed. They don’t need continuous access, 30 seconds is all that would be necessary to copy the cert." And Gabriel's response to that: "There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example." Might as well %s/Verizon/Amazon/g… I also found what Gabriel said here to be interesting: "We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt." So apparently speaking to a couple of lawyers who are probably not upon the FISA court (who apparently pretty much just stamp what has been decided) now have a say in whether such actions can be taken by the NSA and whether they are unconstitutional are not? Don't get me wrong, I've been using DuckDuckGo for a couple of years now, but that's laughable.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  Probably the lawyers are experts in the FISA court.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Contact with lawyers with access to closed hearings and classified proceedings? I wonder if Google talked with those lawyers too…
- grey-area 13y ago
  We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. I think this answers the important question in the article, which is whether DuckDuckGo have received any of these requests. now have a say in whether such actions can be taken by the NSA and whether they are unconstitutional are not? We all have a say to the extent that we cooperate or not with requests like that, I don't find their preparations laughable at all. What do you expect them to do in response to the possibility of FISA requests?
DoubleCluster 13y ago
Thus article states that the NSA will get the information anyway. Even if this is true it may be a good thing to choose a search engine that makes a point of at least not tracking you itself. Sadly Google has much better search results...
bombarolo 13y ago
You don't even need to ask ddg for a private key, go straight to certification authority.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  I see this comment in so many stories lately. Certification authorities do not, in general, have the private keys corresponding to the public keys they sign. Some CAs will generate a key for you and claim not to keep the private half once you download it, but any security-conscious site will opt to upload a signing request for their own public key instead. So, that rules out the possibility of passive spying on HTTPS traffic. As for active spying, a CA could certainly produce a certificate for a MITM attack, but many modern browsers or browser extensions will rapidly detect that, so doing it on a large scale will fail and be detected. The same goes for most security exploits: a large scale systematic exploit will not pass silently. MITM or exploits on a small, targeted scale have some chance of working, depending on the target, but if a government-scale entity targets you personally, you're pretty much screwed anyway. HTTPS still effectively protects against a large, systematic, undetected dragnet of traffic.
  - blahbl4hblah 13y ago
    Yeah, but your "I know how SSL works" story is probably an NSA plant so that the NSA can read my secretz. NSA NSA blah blah NSA NSA
    - klapinat0r 13y ago
      Suspecious username for a plant-critique "blabla". If you had read any of the CA posts you'd both know why that is the case, and also how easy it would be to test. I can give you a private/public key, certificate, the CA (and password for that) and some traffic I've sniffed while interacting with a webserver, using the forementioned key and certificate. Good luck decrypting the traffic. The only thing you'd be able to succesfully do is pretend that YOUR server is actually mine (and proxy from your server to mine). That's an undetected breach, and an MITM attack. OPs point is still entirely valid. You got my private key from ME, not the CA, and even then you're unable to decrypt the traffic (past).
EGreg 13y ago
MegaUpload, LastPass and others are provably not able to access your information. Storing the encryption key yourself is the way to go. But then the govt can capture you and make you give up the key. A whistleblower can threaten to have more incriminating evidence disseminated encrypted somewhere, and if he doesnt check in every 30 days it gets released ... but then the government can just torture him until it makes him give up the key he uses to check in every 30 days. It wouls take a really stubborn guy to persist and let the information be released. Since you dont have any information like that anyway, just assume that if you can access your own data the govt can compel you to do it for them.
- dchest 13y ago
  MegaUpload, LastPass and others are provably not able to access your information Where can I find the proof you're talking about?
  - swaroop 13y ago
    https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-256.htm https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-256.htm
    - dchest 13y ago
      Sorry, this is the first time I'm seeing a security proof in the form of interview, so I can't find it. Could you point out the relevant part? Also, what about Mega?
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Gibson is about as credible as I am when it comes to security - ie, not very.
      - dchest 13y ago
        Credibility doesn't matter, as I'm not asking for a confirmation from an expert: EGreg claims there is a security proof of some kind.
  - 13y ago
mtgx 13y ago
> "DuckDuckGo can easily be compelled either under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), standard court orders, or by secret orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to provide tap-on-demand" Can they actually do that? I mean it's one thing to just "hand over the data" you already have about the user, and maybe even compel the company to decrypt it (although I still think that's BS [1] and companies should fight against it), but can they actually force a company to spy for them, and change their service in such a way that makes it possible? Does FISA and the Patriot Acts actually imply that? Or does he mean it might be yet another one of their "interpretations" of the laws? Either way, if that's possible, just start using StartPage.com. They're based in Norway. [1] http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.html http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.htm...
- pjmlp 13y ago
  I think that a common misconception of the current discussions is that people still expect NSA to obey some kind of law. Never been to the US, but I grew up in a country trying to recover from a dictatorship, so I never believe that secret services have any law to obey.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    > I think that a common misconception of the current discussions is that people still expect NSA to obey some kind of law. I realize that, and I know many things they are doing are extra-constitutional, and even extra-legal. But that was precisely my point. How can the companies just stand to being bullied by law enforcement like that just because "they say so", especially when they think that what they're asking them is at least unconstitutional. And I know there's a difference between how easy this is in theory, and how easy it is in practice, but come on - what are they going to do? Put Ballmer or Larry Page in prison for not obeying them? The companies would have the best 100 lawyers in the world fighting for them. It just pisses me off that some companies seem to cooperate way too easily with the mass spying, either because they find no problem with it themselves, or they're just too scared to try anything, even as big corporations.
edent 13y ago
They also really hate it when people point out their privacy flaws. See http://www.alexanderhanff.com/duckduckgone http://www.alexanderhanff.com/duckduckgone
- wyclif 13y ago
  Except those aren't privacy flaws. He's wrong about DDG setting cookies by default, the easter egg issue, affiliate revenue, and US law. He got so much wrong that I can't take the post seriously.
  - tomphoolery 13y ago
    He's so pretentious it makes me chuckle.
- heyitsnick 13y ago
  Really hate it? Gabriel responded quickly and thoroughly on his forum: https://duck.co/topic/we-have-to-talk-about-ddgs-honesty https://duck.co/topic/we-have-to-talk-about-ddgs-honesty
coldcode 13y ago
The beauty of the NSL system and the NSA acting outside the constitution is that no matter what anyone says there is no way to prove any statement made about receiving or not an NSL. In fact it wouldn't surprise me that if the NSA wanted the data they could compel someone lower in the company and the CEO might never know. How do you prove you are NSA-free if you are the CEO of an American based company? Really the only thing statement that people would believe today is actually showing your NSL publicly and telling the NSA to stuff it. If you haven't been targeted (or someone in your organization was) there is no way to prove it.
zobzu 13y ago
the main argument of this page is "nsa can hack everything cuz google got hacked by the chinese" yeah thanks for the tip, that's so insightful.
glurgh 13y ago
If you are specifically targeted in an investigation [...] The purpose of services like DDG is to reduce the amount of casually collected, personally-identifiable private data you might be strewing about - data that might potentially be recovered and might potentially be used against you or used in ways that you don't like. If you are specifically targeted by an investigation, a law-enforcement agency like the FBI, armed with probable cause and warrants can tap your phone, search your house, track your location, log your keystrokes, etc, etc. DDG can't help you there, you'd also be vulnerable even when using a service provider which really doesn't have access to your data, like tarsnap. DDG is not going to magically protect you from targeted (and perfectly legal, civilian, non-NSA-related) surveillance if you happen to have the bad luck of being a subject of such an investigation. It's a silly standard to hold any service provider to.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  Were these features of DDG ever it's purpose or merely an incidental feature?
  - thirsteh 13y ago
    Purpose.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    It was supposed to be Google except with privacy.
samwillis 13y ago
DDG have a tor hidden service for search [1] and so you can search annonamusly through that, even if someone has access to the ssl privet key. [1] http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-operates-a-tor-exit-enclave.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-o...
- nly 13y ago
  This almost makes no sense. Hidden Services exist to hide the location/identity of the server. You gain the same anonymity by visiting ddg.com via Tor. It's cool that they're running a relay though.
  - stefantalpalaru 13y ago
    I think that connections to hidden services on the Tor network are encrypted end-to-end.
    - 4ad 13y ago
      They are not encrypted at all. Tor provides anonymity (nobody can say where the captured traffic comes from), not encryption (nobody can read my trafic). You should use independent encryption inside Tor. I2P is similar to Tor, but encrypted AFAIK.
      - SamWhited 13y ago
        Tor traffic is encrypted all the way through the network until the exit node. However, your point still stands: Use end-to-end encryption (SSL/TLS) to prevent someone at the exit from seeing your traffic.
        4ad 13y ago
        Yes, they are encrypted, but it's not end-to-end. I should have made my post more clear. If you need end-to-end encyption, participants must explicitly arrange for it independent of Tor.
decryptthis_NSA 13y ago
DuckDuckGo: illusion of privacy? His point is that if NSA wants they can do this and that. I suppose they can also take you to a Romanian black ops site and beat you bloody till you cough up your passwords. The idea is for average Joes and Janes to have a little bit more privacy. When you search on Google, they try everything possible to have you search while logged on and save your search history. All this is linked to: your real name, location (Android) maybe credit cards (Google Play, Adwords) emails sent videos watched books read sites visited (Google Analytics, sites visited that serve Adsense, Google hosted jQuery) your private docs (G Drive, Documents).... This is of course to make more money off you, they can charge more money to advertisers, and all this info is ready to be siphoned by Booz Allen and Hamilton employees and to be added to your file. What do they get from DDG? Relatively speaking, nothing. The idea is to split your activities to make it harder for them, which is great for an average user. By using everything Google, it's even better than sending them a memo detailing everything you did each night. If you're a target, long live TOR, which is not really usable on Google.
_pmf_ 13y ago
Shhh, don't ruin the ongoing circle jerk.
beloch 13y ago
1. Since the U.S. government has given itself both the power to compel U.S. corporations to spy for them and the power to prevent them from revealing this, we can't take the claims of any U.S. corporation at face-value. 2. DuckDuckGo is a U.S. based company.
- nolok 13y ago
  And that's really all there is to it. That's why you don't build secret courts, secret orders, and gag orders.
- blumentopf 13y ago
  Problem is, even if DDG would be hosted in, say, Europe, the NSA would still be able to snoop on the traffic. As has been recently revealed, the German BND may siphon off up to 20% of the traffic at DE-CIX (Internet exchange in Frankfurt) and on average siphons off 5% [1]. The BND closely cooperates with the NSA. As we've seen in the last couple of weeks, Europe is basically a US colony and Germany in particular is not a true sovereign state. [2] What to do? Host in Russia, Latin America? (Disclosure: I am German and DDG is my default search engine.) [1] http://h-online.com/-1909989 http://h-online.com/-1909989 [2] http://sz.de/1.1717216 http://sz.de/1.1717216
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    A foreign intelligence agency like the NSA actually needs less of a legal framework to spy on a foreign company as opposed to a domestic one. It's sort of the whole point of a foreign intelligence agency, not respecting the laws of other countries.
    - jwr 13y ago
      Well, yes. But let's get back to the point of the original post in this thread. There are two problems: 1) we can't trust the networks that our data travels over and 2) we can't trust US-based companies with our data. The first problem is fairly easily dealt with (encrypt and authenticate), while the second one is much worse. A company based in a country that does not have laws enabling agencies to snoop on and prevent the disclosure of said snooping would automatically be more trustworthy than any US-based company.
jister 13y ago
>> Can they refuse to collaborate with the NSA if approached? What I would like to know if they can really refuse when big corps such as Google, Microsoft and others can't? >> Gabriel Weinberg comment: We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. But if they receive such request can they just really say NO while other big companies can't?
p37307 13y ago
Lots of comments here. Not sure if it is already covered or not. So I will be brief. DDG, hushmail, etc. Doesn't really matter does it if the NSA gets you at your internet connection and reads what you are doing from your service providers trunk? You can DuckDuck and Go and hush your email. If they are grabbing it at the point of your modem and your internet provider, the illusion is you are secure but really you are not.
- nine_k 13y ago
  Data for such services leave your computer encrypted with SSL. Bugging your computer (and/or phone) is probably the best way to track your communications clandestinely.
berntb 13y ago
How about the article writer test this before writing? Do DDG-searches about: - A violent political/religious subgroup. - Politician XXXX's opinions about said group - The future travel to your locality of XXXX - How to build bombs with YYYY. Just make certain to wear a bullet proof jacket while reading... :-) But seriously: Sure, the NSA probably index searches on DDG. Of course. It is fully possible DDG isn't aware of it, too. It is too obvious to be at the top of HN. I might have followed the subject too shallowly, but it really surprises me that I haven't seen the responsible politicians talk about the real problem here. You can make a good argument that pervasive monitoring is a good thing in the short perspective (which the supporters do), but over a longer time? After a long time of military or economic problems you get paranoid tendencies (see McCarthy, Putin, 9/11). I have no idea how likely a 1984 scenario (or a present day Russia!) is -- and neither do anyone else. The people responsible should have answers to these questions before making the decisions. And now they should discuss that. (Or doesn't a risk exist if it can happen after they are out of office? Or do they really think there will never be any political/economic bad times again?)
- exceptione 13y ago
  Sure, the NSA probably index searches on DDG. Of course. Well the searches are encrypted so the nsa should have access to the servers themselves right? I dont now if DDG provides forward secrecy though..
  - berntb 13y ago
    We are talking about the same (or a sister) organization that created the viruses in Iran and the Middle East. Civilian search companies aren't as high on the agenda as rouge states' nuclear weapon programs, but still.
ekianjo 13y ago
The article is completely missing the point. Of course the NSA can get information from DDG, the point is that there is not much information to be earned there in the first place, and the searches are not associated with your google account, let's say.
HistoryInAction 13y ago
Hmm, CALEA is really not the right law to be referencing. CALEA generally applies to wiretaps and specifically derives from telephony surveillance and is more relevant—and worrying—to a Twilio or SendHub, rather then DDG. It's more likely to be a portion of the PATRIOT Act (Sec. 215 and possibly 217, h/t to Marcy Wheeler for the education here: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215 http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology... and http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Module%20V.htm http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Mod...) or the specific update to it (Protect America Act of 2007, FISA Amendments Acts of 2008 and most recently 2012) to bring the warrantless wiretapping scandal back into "compliance," and seemingly updating PATRIOT for the current round of surveillance, which was likely reauthorized Dec '12. Now, the FBI recently floated a trial balloon of what we're calling CALEA II, but that's focused more on compelling the providers of in-browser chat products to create backdoors for surveillance: https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CALEAII-techreport.pdf https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CALEAII-techreport.pdf It's not current law yet, and we're fighting to prevent the proposal from becoming law. It's a point of precision that doesn't detract from the author's main point. Just as an update, the legal debate is continuing over both the NSLs themselves and their related gag orders: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/fbis-national-security-letter-gag-orders-violate-1st-amendment-ruled-unconstitutional http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/fbis-national-sec... I'm not sure how or where this case escalated to, but the last time a court declared the gag order to be unconstitutional, it took an act of Congress to reauthorize it, which will be a difficult sell right now. For a final note, here's a counter by the DoJ about how I'm wrong, for whatever that's worth: http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/subs/add_myths.htm http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/subs/add_myths.htm And for full disclosure: I consult with Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) on reforming Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, which is a similar but not directly related issue.
fear91 13y ago
This "blog" has one post and was specifically started to bash DDG. I don't use the duck (yet?) but to me it looks like an attempt at black PR. Even if the duck doesn't give full anonymity, I would still prefer it to Google - the new leaked slides revealed that NSA has direct access to Google, whereas with ddg, they'd have to snoop upstream.
- tokyovapr 13y ago
  I am the author. I did start that blog just for that post. I have never blogged before in any substantial way, but the naivete of comments from the CEO of DDG and the fact that users reading articles like in The Guardian might be misled into believe they are protected from NSA monitoring by DDG, motivated me to blog. No black PR. I don't work for any other search engine company, I am an American working for a small software company in Tokyo, Japan.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    > I am the author. I did start that blog just for that post. Can you prove that you are not an agent of the NSA trying to dissuade people from using services like DDG? I mean, you are using BlogSpot of all services, so you are directly contributing to the tracking of individuals (heck, you are encouraging it), so forgive me if your motives are suspect. Frankly, that you cannot prove otherwise, I think you should say as much: that you should not be trusted.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      Why should you be trusted? Most people can't prove anything about themselves that is not subject to falsification - given deep enough cover, anything is possible. Asking a blog author to prove a negative, which is impossible, is silly. Argue with the message, not with the messenger.
      - jasonlotito 13y ago
        Why should I be trusted? That's the point. Seems you missed it?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yk 13y ago
I like the blog post, but I think that it is somewhat unfair against DDG since the argument works against any internet company. The argument rests essentially on two points: 1. Client/Server architecture has a single point of failure, namely the server. ( Or the network equipment directly upstream of the server.) So that whatever nasty surprise is embedded directly at the server, or in the jurisdiction the server is in, affects whoever is using the server. 2. We do not have a treat model for the NSA, they are somewhere between a usual state level attacker and Cthulhu. We do not really know, what the NSA can or can not do, can they crack the discrete log or factor large numbers? Or do they 'just' have a assorted 0day collection? Is it realistic that they can coerce anyone into revealing public keys? And if they can actually break TLS, can they also break all TLS or does this require some not insubstantial effort on their part? So both of these are real problems and the combination is potentially undermining the trust into the entire internet. But it is not really about DDG.
- nmcfarl 13y ago
  "We do not have a threat model for the NSA, they are somewhere between a usual state level attacker and Cthulhu" just about made my day! Awesome description.
- MarkHarmon 13y ago
  "... it is somewhat unfair against DDG since the argument works against any internet company" What other search engines are being suggested for use as a safer alternative to the major search engines? Did any of those companies respond by affirming their ability to protect your privacy in a way that is not technically possible? The author's point is that you can't dodge the NSA's scrutiny, and if you think you can then you are either lying or uneducated about the NSA's capabilities. UPDATE: What I'm trying to say is that the article doesn't really work when directed at Google or Yahoo because we already know that our privacy is compromised there.
  - Amarok 13y ago
    What about startpage? I know they're still dependent on google, but in terms of privacy they seem to be at the same level as DDG. At least they're smaller than DDG, so it's less likely that the NSA will bother with them
Tloewald 13y ago
The key thing about Google et al is that they maintain user accounts and try to get you to stay logged in which means (a) they maintain huge data stores that are (b) tracked by user. While DDG can be required to turn over its records, could theoretically hand its unencrypted traffic over to the NSA, and in any event the NSA could simply pluck the packets off the air en route, it would then have to figure out which packet was from whom and join the dots itself. This is essentially no different from what I assume the NSA can do with any damn website, foreign or domestic, it likes. As a further wrinkle, if you are logged into Google then it can watch your web surfing activity onto any website with embedded google code (analytics, adwords) which is pretty much most websites. All of this comes down to Google is an advertising company. If DDG becomes an advertising company, watch out.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  If DDG ever becomes an anything company, watch out. Seriously, what is the business model they could have that would not result in them collecting some set of info? Donations?
- Kylekramer 13y ago
  How is DDG not an advertising company already? One of the top hit on every search I do on DDG is an ad (actually in my testing I found if I do an informational search like "Barack Obama" I get an ad on DDG and none on Google). If advertising itself is the problem, DDG has already doomed itself.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    You're right of course about DDG selling advertising — I assume at much lower cost than Google given their relative inability to gather intelligence about users. The big question is whether they have a non-evil business model on the horizon (sponsored links aren't bad of themselves, but they are the entrance to the rabbit hole Google has long since gone down and expanded into a giant underground complex).
Ihmahr 13y ago
Also consider the holland based search engine www.startpage.com which has al kinds of certificates.
trotsky 13y ago
EDITED: Thanks guys, it seems like I managed to paste over most of my post with the clipboard filled with the last one. Thanks for being so nice pointing it out. Sucks, the on topic one i destroyed was leaps above the banal content that replaced it. Let something here to avoid you guys being orphaned. Sorry for reducing the signal to noise ratio!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mikegioia 13y ago
  You posted this same comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040733 But added a section on DDG to the bottom...
evolve2k 13y ago
Response from DuckDuckGo CEO from the article comments: "Hi, this is Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo. I do not believe we can be compelled to store or siphon off user data to the NSA or anyone else. All the existing US laws are about turning over existing business records and not about compelling you change your business practices. In our case such an order would further force us to lie to consumers, which would put us in trouble with the FTC and irreparably hurt our business. We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt. There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example."
angryasian 13y ago
are we still all just forgetting the fact that DDG is just an aggregator of other search engines. Specifically Bing.

247 points by ziodave 13y ago

I'm surprised by how many world class super spy/hacker types there are on HN...who knew that, besides just generally being snarky about shit that you half understand, that you had so many secrets to protect?

quantumpotato_ 13y ago
I'm surprised you don't recognize the principle of the matter. There was an article posted a while back about "in a world of perfect surveillance, legal change would be impossible". Much of social progress came about because people could communicate in secret.

ziodave 13y ago

If what's written in this article is true, that basically means that even hosting a server in the US is basically a breach in privacy. Do you think this is reliable information?

claudius 13y ago
What makes you think that hosting a server in one of the world’s oldest democracies, the country among the first to have a written constitution and a strong bill of rights, the land of the free, would not be a breach of privacy? Oh wait…
- nine_k 13y ago
  One of the world's oldest democracies? You mean Switzerland? Well, hosting a server there might be a good idea.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Iceland does Switzerland even better.
  - claudius 13y ago
    ‘one’ is still an indefinite, rather than definite, article, and the USA are certainly one of the older, still-existing democracies (even though, of course, there are even older ones).
gurkendoktor 13y ago
You might be surprised how many non-US citizens will agree with that statement.

brianwillis 13y ago

Before drawing any conclusions from this, I recommend reading Gabriel Weinberg's response in the comment section. I felt considerably better after reading it.

pjmlp 13y ago
Yeah, but I still agree with the article. If the information flows via machines located in the US, NSA can get to the information at several levels. Then it also depends how much of the law, NSA makes for itself. Like any HN reader that lived through dictatorship governments can attest, what the law says and the secret services do, doesn't need to be in sync. And opposing them, well, there are plenty of ways to change people's mind that the right way is to help them. If this is the direction the government will carry on doing, good luck opposing them just by switching providers, without doing anything more active.
- dev1n 13y ago
  Looks like I'm moving to iceland.
cuillevel3 13y ago
Yeah, his response made me laugh out loud for like 30 seconds straight. How uninformed and naiv can one CEO be? Did he hear about the secret courts at all?
DannyBee 13y ago
I felt considerably worse, because he takes a very naive view of the legal realm. Let me expand a bit: I don't think Gabriel is lying/dumb/whatever. However, the statement given essentially comes out to "If we had to, we would fight the good fight and we very strongly believe we would win". I'm all in favor of fighting as hard as you can against broad/illegal/user harmful orders/etc. But at some point, you will lose, even with the law and moral justice on your side. This is a certainty. Google has lost. Yahoo has lost. Twitter has lost. Microsoft has lost. Contrary to the belief that they are cooperative, they don't want anything to do with anything, and fought with more resources and energy than DDG probably can muster (again, no offense to Gabriel). Let's ignore for a second whether they have any data to give or not. The point is that at some time in the future you will not just lose temporarily, you will lose in a way that you have to make a choice because yourself/your business/your livelihood and your users privacy. Believing otherwise makes you naive in my eyes.

cinquemb 13y ago

"Option 2 Many smaller internet companies, including DuckDuckGo, do not operate their own data-center, but instead are “hosted” in another provider’s datacenter. In DuckDuckGo’s case, they are hosted by Verizon Internet Services. We’ve all learned about the cozy relationship between the NSA and Verizon, it is quite imaginable that Verizon would simply give them access to a DuckDuckGo server, or the load-balancer which is likely owned and operated by Verizon and upon which the SSL decryption key is installed. They don’t need continuous access, 30 seconds is all that would be necessary to copy the cert." And Gabriel's response to that: "There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example." Might as well %s/Verizon/Amazon/g… I also found what Gabriel said here to be interesting: "We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt." So apparently speaking to a couple of lawyers who are probably not upon the FISA court (who apparently pretty much just stamp what has been decided) now have a say in whether such actions can be taken by the NSA and whether they are unconstitutional are not? Don't get me wrong, I've been using DuckDuckGo for a couple of years now, but that's laughable.

denzil_correa 13y ago
Probably the lawyers are experts in the FISA court.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Contact with lawyers with access to closed hearings and classified proceedings? I wonder if Google talked with those lawyers too…
grey-area 13y ago
We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. I think this answers the important question in the article, which is whether DuckDuckGo have received any of these requests. now have a say in whether such actions can be taken by the NSA and whether they are unconstitutional are not? We all have a say to the extent that we cooperate or not with requests like that, I don't find their preparations laughable at all. What do you expect them to do in response to the possibility of FISA requests?

DoubleCluster 13y ago

Thus article states that the NSA will get the information anyway. Even if this is true it may be a good thing to choose a search engine that makes a point of at least not tracking you itself. Sadly Google has much better search results...

bombarolo 13y ago

You don't even need to ask ddg for a private key, go straight to certification authority.

JoshTriplett 13y ago
I see this comment in so many stories lately. Certification authorities do not, in general, have the private keys corresponding to the public keys they sign. Some CAs will generate a key for you and claim not to keep the private half once you download it, but any security-conscious site will opt to upload a signing request for their own public key instead. So, that rules out the possibility of passive spying on HTTPS traffic. As for active spying, a CA could certainly produce a certificate for a MITM attack, but many modern browsers or browser extensions will rapidly detect that, so doing it on a large scale will fail and be detected. The same goes for most security exploits: a large scale systematic exploit will not pass silently. MITM or exploits on a small, targeted scale have some chance of working, depending on the target, but if a government-scale entity targets you personally, you're pretty much screwed anyway. HTTPS still effectively protects against a large, systematic, undetected dragnet of traffic.
- blahbl4hblah 13y ago
  Yeah, but your "I know how SSL works" story is probably an NSA plant so that the NSA can read my secretz. NSA NSA blah blah NSA NSA
  - klapinat0r 13y ago
    Suspecious username for a plant-critique "blabla". If you had read any of the CA posts you'd both know why that is the case, and also how easy it would be to test. I can give you a private/public key, certificate, the CA (and password for that) and some traffic I've sniffed while interacting with a webserver, using the forementioned key and certificate. Good luck decrypting the traffic. The only thing you'd be able to succesfully do is pretend that YOUR server is actually mine (and proxy from your server to mine). That's an undetected breach, and an MITM attack. OPs point is still entirely valid. You got my private key from ME, not the CA, and even then you're unable to decrypt the traffic (past).

EGreg 13y ago

MegaUpload, LastPass and others are provably not able to access your information. Storing the encryption key yourself is the way to go. But then the govt can capture you and make you give up the key. A whistleblower can threaten to have more incriminating evidence disseminated encrypted somewhere, and if he doesnt check in every 30 days it gets released ... but then the government can just torture him until it makes him give up the key he uses to check in every 30 days. It wouls take a really stubborn guy to persist and let the information be released. Since you dont have any information like that anyway, just assume that if you can access your own data the govt can compel you to do it for them.

dchest 13y ago
MegaUpload, LastPass and others are provably not able to access your information Where can I find the proof you're talking about?
- swaroop 13y ago
  https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-256.htm https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-256.htm
  - dchest 13y ago
    Sorry, this is the first time I'm seeing a security proof in the form of interview, so I can't find it. Could you point out the relevant part? Also, what about Mega?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Gibson is about as credible as I am when it comes to security - ie, not very.
    - dchest 13y ago
      Credibility doesn't matter, as I'm not asking for a confirmation from an expert: EGreg claims there is a security proof of some kind.
- 13y ago

mtgx 13y ago

> "DuckDuckGo can easily be compelled either under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), standard court orders, or by secret orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to provide tap-on-demand" Can they actually do that? I mean it's one thing to just "hand over the data" you already have about the user, and maybe even compel the company to decrypt it (although I still think that's BS [1] and companies should fight against it), but can they actually force a company to spy for them, and change their service in such a way that makes it possible? Does FISA and the Patriot Acts actually imply that? Or does he mean it might be yet another one of their "interpretations" of the laws? Either way, if that's possible, just start using StartPage.com. They're based in Norway. [1] http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.html http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2010/09/calea-and-encryption.htm...

pjmlp 13y ago
I think that a common misconception of the current discussions is that people still expect NSA to obey some kind of law. Never been to the US, but I grew up in a country trying to recover from a dictatorship, so I never believe that secret services have any law to obey.
- mtgx 13y ago
  > I think that a common misconception of the current discussions is that people still expect NSA to obey some kind of law. I realize that, and I know many things they are doing are extra-constitutional, and even extra-legal. But that was precisely my point. How can the companies just stand to being bullied by law enforcement like that just because "they say so", especially when they think that what they're asking them is at least unconstitutional. And I know there's a difference between how easy this is in theory, and how easy it is in practice, but come on - what are they going to do? Put Ballmer or Larry Page in prison for not obeying them? The companies would have the best 100 lawyers in the world fighting for them. It just pisses me off that some companies seem to cooperate way too easily with the mass spying, either because they find no problem with it themselves, or they're just too scared to try anything, even as big corporations.

edent 13y ago

They also really hate it when people point out their privacy flaws. See http://www.alexanderhanff.com/duckduckgone http://www.alexanderhanff.com/duckduckgone

wyclif 13y ago
Except those aren't privacy flaws. He's wrong about DDG setting cookies by default, the easter egg issue, affiliate revenue, and US law. He got so much wrong that I can't take the post seriously.
- tomphoolery 13y ago
  He's so pretentious it makes me chuckle.
heyitsnick 13y ago
Really hate it? Gabriel responded quickly and thoroughly on his forum: https://duck.co/topic/we-have-to-talk-about-ddgs-honesty https://duck.co/topic/we-have-to-talk-about-ddgs-honesty

coldcode 13y ago

The beauty of the NSL system and the NSA acting outside the constitution is that no matter what anyone says there is no way to prove any statement made about receiving or not an NSL. In fact it wouldn't surprise me that if the NSA wanted the data they could compel someone lower in the company and the CEO might never know. How do you prove you are NSA-free if you are the CEO of an American based company? Really the only thing statement that people would believe today is actually showing your NSL publicly and telling the NSA to stuff it. If you haven't been targeted (or someone in your organization was) there is no way to prove it.

zobzu 13y ago

the main argument of this page is "nsa can hack everything cuz google got hacked by the chinese" yeah thanks for the tip, that's so insightful.

glurgh 13y ago

If you are specifically targeted in an investigation [...] The purpose of services like DDG is to reduce the amount of casually collected, personally-identifiable private data you might be strewing about - data that might potentially be recovered and might potentially be used against you or used in ways that you don't like. If you are specifically targeted by an investigation, a law-enforcement agency like the FBI, armed with probable cause and warrants can tap your phone, search your house, track your location, log your keystrokes, etc, etc. DDG can't help you there, you'd also be vulnerable even when using a service provider which really doesn't have access to your data, like tarsnap. DDG is not going to magically protect you from targeted (and perfectly legal, civilian, non-NSA-related) surveillance if you happen to have the bad luck of being a subject of such an investigation. It's a silly standard to hold any service provider to.

brown9-2 13y ago
Were these features of DDG ever it's purpose or merely an incidental feature?
- thirsteh 13y ago
  Purpose.
- superuser2 13y ago
  It was supposed to be Google except with privacy.

samwillis 13y ago

DDG have a tor hidden service for search [1] and so you can search annonamusly through that, even if someone has access to the ssl privet key. [1] http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-operates-a-tor-exit-enclave.html http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-o...

nly 13y ago
This almost makes no sense. Hidden Services exist to hide the location/identity of the server. You gain the same anonymity by visiting ddg.com via Tor. It's cool that they're running a relay though.
- stefantalpalaru 13y ago
  I think that connections to hidden services on the Tor network are encrypted end-to-end.
  - 4ad 13y ago
    They are not encrypted at all. Tor provides anonymity (nobody can say where the captured traffic comes from), not encryption (nobody can read my trafic). You should use independent encryption inside Tor. I2P is similar to Tor, but encrypted AFAIK.
    - SamWhited 13y ago
      Tor traffic is encrypted all the way through the network until the exit node. However, your point still stands: Use end-to-end encryption (SSL/TLS) to prevent someone at the exit from seeing your traffic.
      - 4ad 13y ago
        Yes, they are encrypted, but it's not end-to-end. I should have made my post more clear. If you need end-to-end encyption, participants must explicitly arrange for it independent of Tor.

decryptthis_NSA 13y ago

DuckDuckGo: illusion of privacy? His point is that if NSA wants they can do this and that. I suppose they can also take you to a Romanian black ops site and beat you bloody till you cough up your passwords. The idea is for average Joes and Janes to have a little bit more privacy. When you search on Google, they try everything possible to have you search while logged on and save your search history. All this is linked to: your real name, location (Android) maybe credit cards (Google Play, Adwords) emails sent videos watched books read sites visited (Google Analytics, sites visited that serve Adsense, Google hosted jQuery) your private docs (G Drive, Documents).... This is of course to make more money off you, they can charge more money to advertisers, and all this info is ready to be siphoned by Booz Allen and Hamilton employees and to be added to your file. What do they get from DDG? Relatively speaking, nothing. The idea is to split your activities to make it harder for them, which is great for an average user. By using everything Google, it's even better than sending them a memo detailing everything you did each night. If you're a target, long live TOR, which is not really usable on Google.

_pmf_ 13y ago

Shhh, don't ruin the ongoing circle jerk.

beloch 13y ago

1. Since the U.S. government has given itself both the power to compel U.S. corporations to spy for them and the power to prevent them from revealing this, we can't take the claims of any U.S. corporation at face-value. 2. DuckDuckGo is a U.S. based company.

nolok 13y ago
And that's really all there is to it. That's why you don't build secret courts, secret orders, and gag orders.
blumentopf 13y ago
Problem is, even if DDG would be hosted in, say, Europe, the NSA would still be able to snoop on the traffic. As has been recently revealed, the German BND may siphon off up to 20% of the traffic at DE-CIX (Internet exchange in Frankfurt) and on average siphons off 5% [1]. The BND closely cooperates with the NSA. As we've seen in the last couple of weeks, Europe is basically a US colony and Germany in particular is not a true sovereign state. [2] What to do? Host in Russia, Latin America? (Disclosure: I am German and DDG is my default search engine.) [1] http://h-online.com/-1909989 http://h-online.com/-1909989 [2] http://sz.de/1.1717216 http://sz.de/1.1717216
- brown9-2 13y ago
  A foreign intelligence agency like the NSA actually needs less of a legal framework to spy on a foreign company as opposed to a domestic one. It's sort of the whole point of a foreign intelligence agency, not respecting the laws of other countries.
  - jwr 13y ago
    Well, yes. But let's get back to the point of the original post in this thread. There are two problems: 1) we can't trust the networks that our data travels over and 2) we can't trust US-based companies with our data. The first problem is fairly easily dealt with (encrypt and authenticate), while the second one is much worse. A company based in a country that does not have laws enabling agencies to snoop on and prevent the disclosure of said snooping would automatically be more trustworthy than any US-based company.

jister 13y ago

>> Can they refuse to collaborate with the NSA if approached? What I would like to know if they can really refuse when big corps such as Google, Microsoft and others can't? >> Gabriel Weinberg comment: We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. But if they receive such request can they just really say NO while other big companies can't?

p37307 13y ago

Lots of comments here. Not sure if it is already covered or not. So I will be brief. DDG, hushmail, etc. Doesn't really matter does it if the NSA gets you at your internet connection and reads what you are doing from your service providers trunk? You can DuckDuck and Go and hush your email. If they are grabbing it at the point of your modem and your internet provider, the illusion is you are secure but really you are not.

nine_k 13y ago
Data for such services leave your computer encrypted with SSL. Bugging your computer (and/or phone) is probably the best way to track your communications clandestinely.

berntb 13y ago

How about the article writer test this before writing? Do DDG-searches about: - A violent political/religious subgroup. - Politician XXXX's opinions about said group - The future travel to your locality of XXXX - How to build bombs with YYYY. Just make certain to wear a bullet proof jacket while reading... :-) But seriously: Sure, the NSA probably index searches on DDG. Of course. It is fully possible DDG isn't aware of it, too. It is too obvious to be at the top of HN. I might have followed the subject too shallowly, but it really surprises me that I haven't seen the responsible politicians talk about the real problem here. You can make a good argument that pervasive monitoring is a good thing in the short perspective (which the supporters do), but over a longer time? After a long time of military or economic problems you get paranoid tendencies (see McCarthy, Putin, 9/11). I have no idea how likely a 1984 scenario (or a present day Russia!) is -- and neither do anyone else. The people responsible should have answers to these questions before making the decisions. And now they should discuss that. (Or doesn't a risk exist if it can happen after they are out of office? Or do they really think there will never be any political/economic bad times again?)

exceptione 13y ago
Sure, the NSA probably index searches on DDG. Of course. Well the searches are encrypted so the nsa should have access to the servers themselves right? I dont now if DDG provides forward secrecy though..
- berntb 13y ago
  We are talking about the same (or a sister) organization that created the viruses in Iran and the Middle East. Civilian search companies aren't as high on the agenda as rouge states' nuclear weapon programs, but still.

ekianjo 13y ago

The article is completely missing the point. Of course the NSA can get information from DDG, the point is that there is not much information to be earned there in the first place, and the searches are not associated with your google account, let's say.

HistoryInAction 13y ago

Hmm, CALEA is really not the right law to be referencing. CALEA generally applies to wiretaps and specifically derives from telephony surveillance and is more relevant—and worrying—to a Twilio or SendHub, rather then DDG. It's more likely to be a portion of the PATRIOT Act (Sec. 215 and possibly 217, h/t to Marcy Wheeler for the education here: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215 http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology... and http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Module%20V.htm http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Introduction%20to%20Mod...) or the specific update to it (Protect America Act of 2007, FISA Amendments Acts of 2008 and most recently 2012) to bring the warrantless wiretapping scandal back into "compliance," and seemingly updating PATRIOT for the current round of surveillance, which was likely reauthorized Dec '12. Now, the FBI recently floated a trial balloon of what we're calling CALEA II, but that's focused more on compelling the providers of in-browser chat products to create backdoors for surveillance: https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CALEAII-techreport.pdf https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CALEAII-techreport.pdf It's not current law yet, and we're fighting to prevent the proposal from becoming law. It's a point of precision that doesn't detract from the author's main point. Just as an update, the legal debate is continuing over both the NSLs themselves and their related gag orders: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/fbis-national-security-letter-gag-orders-violate-1st-amendment-ruled-unconstitutional http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/fbis-national-sec... I'm not sure how or where this case escalated to, but the last time a court declared the gag order to be unconstitutional, it took an act of Congress to reauthorize it, which will be a difficult sell right now. For a final note, here's a counter by the DoJ about how I'm wrong, for whatever that's worth: http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/subs/add_myths.htm http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/subs/add_myths.htm And for full disclosure: I consult with Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) on reforming Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, which is a similar but not directly related issue.

fear91 13y ago

This "blog" has one post and was specifically started to bash DDG. I don't use the duck (yet?) but to me it looks like an attempt at black PR. Even if the duck doesn't give full anonymity, I would still prefer it to Google - the new leaked slides revealed that NSA has direct access to Google, whereas with ddg, they'd have to snoop upstream.

tokyovapr 13y ago
I am the author. I did start that blog just for that post. I have never blogged before in any substantial way, but the naivete of comments from the CEO of DDG and the fact that users reading articles like in The Guardian might be misled into believe they are protected from NSA monitoring by DDG, motivated me to blog. No black PR. I don't work for any other search engine company, I am an American working for a small software company in Tokyo, Japan.
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  > I am the author. I did start that blog just for that post. Can you prove that you are not an agent of the NSA trying to dissuade people from using services like DDG? I mean, you are using BlogSpot of all services, so you are directly contributing to the tracking of individuals (heck, you are encouraging it), so forgive me if your motives are suspect. Frankly, that you cannot prove otherwise, I think you should say as much: that you should not be trusted.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    Why should you be trusted? Most people can't prove anything about themselves that is not subject to falsification - given deep enough cover, anything is possible. Asking a blog author to prove a negative, which is impossible, is silly. Argue with the message, not with the messenger.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago
      Why should I be trusted? That's the point. Seems you missed it?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yk 13y ago

I like the blog post, but I think that it is somewhat unfair against DDG since the argument works against any internet company. The argument rests essentially on two points: 1. Client/Server architecture has a single point of failure, namely the server. ( Or the network equipment directly upstream of the server.) So that whatever nasty surprise is embedded directly at the server, or in the jurisdiction the server is in, affects whoever is using the server. 2. We do not have a treat model for the NSA, they are somewhere between a usual state level attacker and Cthulhu. We do not really know, what the NSA can or can not do, can they crack the discrete log or factor large numbers? Or do they 'just' have a assorted 0day collection? Is it realistic that they can coerce anyone into revealing public keys? And if they can actually break TLS, can they also break all TLS or does this require some not insubstantial effort on their part? So both of these are real problems and the combination is potentially undermining the trust into the entire internet. But it is not really about DDG.

nmcfarl 13y ago
"We do not have a threat model for the NSA, they are somewhere between a usual state level attacker and Cthulhu" just about made my day! Awesome description.
MarkHarmon 13y ago
"... it is somewhat unfair against DDG since the argument works against any internet company" What other search engines are being suggested for use as a safer alternative to the major search engines? Did any of those companies respond by affirming their ability to protect your privacy in a way that is not technically possible? The author's point is that you can't dodge the NSA's scrutiny, and if you think you can then you are either lying or uneducated about the NSA's capabilities. UPDATE: What I'm trying to say is that the article doesn't really work when directed at Google or Yahoo because we already know that our privacy is compromised there.
- Amarok 13y ago
  What about startpage? I know they're still dependent on google, but in terms of privacy they seem to be at the same level as DDG. At least they're smaller than DDG, so it's less likely that the NSA will bother with them

Tloewald 13y ago

The key thing about Google et al is that they maintain user accounts and try to get you to stay logged in which means (a) they maintain huge data stores that are (b) tracked by user. While DDG can be required to turn over its records, could theoretically hand its unencrypted traffic over to the NSA, and in any event the NSA could simply pluck the packets off the air en route, it would then have to figure out which packet was from whom and join the dots itself. This is essentially no different from what I assume the NSA can do with any damn website, foreign or domestic, it likes. As a further wrinkle, if you are logged into Google then it can watch your web surfing activity onto any website with embedded google code (analytics, adwords) which is pretty much most websites. All of this comes down to Google is an advertising company. If DDG becomes an advertising company, watch out.

DannyBee 13y ago
If DDG ever becomes an anything company, watch out. Seriously, what is the business model they could have that would not result in them collecting some set of info? Donations?
Kylekramer 13y ago
How is DDG not an advertising company already? One of the top hit on every search I do on DDG is an ad (actually in my testing I found if I do an informational search like "Barack Obama" I get an ad on DDG and none on Google). If advertising itself is the problem, DDG has already doomed itself.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  You're right of course about DDG selling advertising — I assume at much lower cost than Google given their relative inability to gather intelligence about users. The big question is whether they have a non-evil business model on the horizon (sponsored links aren't bad of themselves, but they are the entrance to the rabbit hole Google has long since gone down and expanded into a giant underground complex).

Ihmahr 13y ago

Also consider the holland based search engine www.startpage.com which has al kinds of certificates.

trotsky 13y ago

EDITED: Thanks guys, it seems like I managed to paste over most of my post with the clipboard filled with the last one. Thanks for being so nice pointing it out. Sucks, the on topic one i destroyed was leaps above the banal content that replaced it. Let something here to avoid you guys being orphaned. Sorry for reducing the signal to noise ratio!

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mikegioia 13y ago
You posted this same comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040733 But added a section on DDG to the bottom...

evolve2k 13y ago

Response from DuckDuckGo CEO from the article comments: "Hi, this is Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo. I do not believe we can be compelled to store or siphon off user data to the NSA or anyone else. All the existing US laws are about turning over existing business records and not about compelling you change your business practices. In our case such an order would further force us to lie to consumers, which would put us in trouble with the FTC and irreparably hurt our business. We have not received any request like this, and do not expect to. We have spoken with many lawyers particularly skilled and experienced in this part of US and international law. If we were to receive such a request we believe as do these others it would be highly unconstitutional on many independent grounds, and there is plenty of legal precedent there. With CALEA in particular, search engines are exempt. There are many additional legal and technical inaccuracies in this article and I will not address all of them in this comment. All our front-end servers are hosted on Amazon not Verizon, for example."

angryasian 13y ago

are we still all just forgetting the fact that DDG is just an aggregator of other search engines. Specifically Bing.