4 ms·

Seems like kind of a weak attempt at a 'gotcha'. I don't think there's really any expectations that attendees at a conference are only doing work related thing

Seems like kind of a weak attempt at a 'gotcha'. I don't think there's really any expectations that attendees at a conference are only doing work related things 100% of the time. The fact that politician X was reading the paper online while waiting for a talk to start is pretty weak tea. If anything, I think this sort of reinforces what a lot of people think about these sort of surveillance concerns. That their web-traffic isn't particularity interesting, so they don't really care if the gov't, or whomever, knows about it.

belorn 12y ago
I think a large portion of this was to make the people who make policy about surveillance also feel surveilled. Any one who was there will have to ask themselves about what places they visited, what emails they read, and if leaked, what impact that can have on them personally.
ersii 12y ago
So, this isn't any regular conference. This is a conference filled with mostly Swedish politicians, some in government/office and a lot of different Swedish agency officials. Then there's of course some foreign dignitaries, as well as press and a few select normal persons. It wasn't translated, but in the Swedish press release - they note that "Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och beredskap", the Swedish equivalent of FEMA in the US - had at least one official agency staffer connecting to their agency e-mail server over this insecure/open network. That said, most conference attendees are at the conference in their official capacity, ie. at work.
- hvidgaard 12y ago
  If that is a security risk, then they ought to make the mail unconnectable outside their own network and demand VPN usage. You cannot blame the person for a poor security setup within his organization.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
I think it's a good idea actually. Make politicians feel what it's like to be monitored, to have their privacy violated, that kinda stuff. Protests and objections in themselves probably won't sway politicians into opposing surveillance; being the subject of said surveillance probably would.
Squarel 12y ago
I think it was more that attendees at a conference just log onto the nearest available wifi, regardless of whether it is secure or not, not what sites they were going to They were also logging onto government mail servers for example, which, whilst it may be boring to you or me, there are probably people out there who can make use of log in details for various sites that may have been accessed over open wifi. EDIT: The source article makes it a little clearer than the arstechnica one http://www.thelocal.se/20150114/young-pirate-hacks-into-top-security-conference http://www.thelocal.se/20150114/young-pirate-hacks-into-top-...
vinkelhake 12y ago
I don't think the point was to catch them surfing other sites, but more to show people how they can be fingerprinted and identified by doing "metadata" surveillance.

belorn 12y ago

I think a large portion of this was to make the people who make policy about surveillance also feel surveilled. Any one who was there will have to ask themselves about what places they visited, what emails they read, and if leaked, what impact that can have on them personally.

ersii 12y ago

So, this isn't any regular conference. This is a conference filled with mostly Swedish politicians, some in government/office and a lot of different Swedish agency officials. Then there's of course some foreign dignitaries, as well as press and a few select normal persons. It wasn't translated, but in the Swedish press release - they note that "Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och beredskap", the Swedish equivalent of FEMA in the US - had at least one official agency staffer connecting to their agency e-mail server over this insecure/open network. That said, most conference attendees are at the conference in their official capacity, ie. at work.

hvidgaard 12y ago
If that is a security risk, then they ought to make the mail unconnectable outside their own network and demand VPN usage. You cannot blame the person for a poor security setup within his organization.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

I think it's a good idea actually. Make politicians feel what it's like to be monitored, to have their privacy violated, that kinda stuff. Protests and objections in themselves probably won't sway politicians into opposing surveillance; being the subject of said surveillance probably would.

Squarel 12y ago

I think it was more that attendees at a conference just log onto the nearest available wifi, regardless of whether it is secure or not, not what sites they were going to They were also logging onto government mail servers for example, which, whilst it may be boring to you or me, there are probably people out there who can make use of log in details for various sites that may have been accessed over open wifi. EDIT: The source article makes it a little clearer than the arstechnica one http://www.thelocal.se/20150114/young-pirate-hacks-into-top-security-conference http://www.thelocal.se/20150114/young-pirate-hacks-into-top-...

vinkelhake 12y ago

I don't think the point was to catch them surfing other sites, but more to show people how they can be fingerprinted and identified by doing "metadata" surveillance.