The CIA has been snooping around in your WiFi router

[JAKEBAB]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Yeah but turns out I'm a brazilian/german citizen.

NSA bugged shipments of Cisco equipment heading overseas, they were probably targeted but still don't think your safe because your not in the US.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, JAKEBAB said:

they were probably targeted but still don't think your safe because your not in the US.

I'm safe from suffering any legal action since I'm not in their jurisdiction, what they do with my metadata on the other hand I really barely care, as if any one is interested on the pony porn my boyfriend and I watch

[Biggerboot]

11 minutes ago, CostcoSamples said:

The issue is mass surveillance.  It is very deep and goes to the root of human rights and the nature of government.  

Sounds more like a political view when you put it that way (which I'm sure was your intention).  Mass surveillance is conducted to some degree in every aspect of our lives (i.e. Big Data type stuff).  It's information that's not so specific to me where I'd start worrying about it.

 

Kind of an issue that goes back before the technology boom.  There are varying degrees where I think it's right or wrong.   Ultimately if they try to do something that doesn't agree with enough people, they'll get pushed back.

[CostcoSamples]

5 minutes ago, Biggerboot said:

Sounds more like a political view when you put it that way (which I'm sure was your intention).  Mass surveillance is conducted to some degree in every aspect of our lives (i.e. Big Data type stuff).  It's information that's not so specific to me where I'd start worrying about it.

 

Kind of an issue that goes back before the technology boom.  There are varying degrees where I think it's right or wrong.   Ultimately if they try to do something that doesn't agree with enough people, they'll get pushed back.

Yes, it is political.  It is also philosophical and more people need to stop and think about the issue.  I'm not saying I have the right answers, but I have yet to talk to a person who has thought about it deeply who agrees that government spying is good.  Targeted police work has always been a thing, and had to follow proper rule of law channels (needed a court issued warrant).

 

But one thing that is certainly true - people in government like to expand their powers.  Mass surveillance of citizens combined with incredible hacking arsenals is pretty brutal combination.  I actually don't care as much about commercial data collection since it is used for the purpose of making money (usually through advertising).  

[PlayStation 2]

There was a reason JFK wanted to disband the CIA.

[Biggerboot]

17 minutes ago, CostcoSamples said:

Yes, it is political.  It is also philosophical and more people need to stop and think about the issue.  I'm not saying I have the right answers, but I have yet to talk to a person who has thought about it deeply who agrees that government spying is good.  Targeted police work has always been a thing, and had to follow proper rule of law channels (needed a court issued warrant).

 

But one thing that is certainly true - people in government like to expand their powers.  Mass surveillance of citizens combined with incredible hacking arsenals is pretty brutal combination.  I actually don't care as much about commercial data collection since it is used for the purpose of making money (usually through advertising).  

Of course, I don't think it's a good thing that we get spied on, but I think it's good to look at it from the security prospective too, and not just the philosophical.  The more direct factor (that we could have more control over) is that backdoors get put on devices specifically so they can be broken into (by the gov.), which also opens us up to other parties.  Companies should just be building the most secure thing they can, and if somebody happens to crack it, that's good for them.  It goes back to that 'not understanding what they want to control' thing.  The mass-surveillance aspect is something I agree with you on, but it's such a one-sided argument that it's why I sort of lack passion for the topic.  

 

The reason I think government surveillance is more scary than commercial isn't the motivation - at the end of the day, you can say they're also in it to make money.  But it's the simple fact that we can choose to be involved with certain companies, and not always choose where to live (but even that is kinda debatable sometimes).  The government controls so many aspects of our lives, so the last thing we want them to control is our privacy.

 

[vorticalbox]

7 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

All they'll see is a massive collection of some questionable sites, other than that I don't give two fucks what they see.

its this sort of reasoning is why they get away with this sort of thing.

 

I have nothing to hide so let them look is exactly the same as i don't need free speech because i have nothing to say. 

 

it eats away at peoples rights and freedoms and we should all stop thinking as such right now, so what if we have nothing to hide you don't get ti look at my stuff. 

 

The eu has wrote up a draft which will make end to end encryption mandatory and back doors into any system illegal and this is exactly what needs to happen. peoples privacy is important. 

[CostcoSamples]

1 hour ago, Biggerboot said:

Of course, I don't think it's a good thing that we get spied on, but I think it's good to look at it from the security prospective too, and not just the philosophical.  The more direct factor (that we could have more control over) is that backdoors get put on devices specifically so they can be broken into (by the gov.), which also opens us up to other parties.  Companies should just be building the most secure thing they can, and if somebody happens to crack it, that's good for them.  It goes back to that 'not understanding what they want to control' thing.  The mass-surveillance aspect is something I agree with you on, but it's such a one-sided argument that it's why I sort of lack passion for the topic.  

 

The reason I think government surveillance is more scary than commercial isn't the motivation - at the end of the day, you can say they're also in it to make money.  But it's the simple fact that we can choose to be involved with certain companies, and not always choose where to live (but even that is kinda debatable sometimes).  The government controls so many aspects of our lives, so the last thing we want them to control is our privacy.

 

Exactly.  You can opt-out of Facebook, you can't opt-out of gov control.  And since the democratic process is so slow and it is so difficult to roll back laws, it's better to block them in the first place.  Anyway, I think we are probably on the same page on this stuff.  

[KuJoe]

9 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Is engadget really that bad now?

 

This article is just flat out terrible, it sounds like it was written by a 5 year old who heard the story passed on through three other 5 year olds. It's like they copy/pasted the original article and took out any actual details to avoid plagiarism.

 

 

I agree, the complete lack of information makes the article useless. They completely ignore the fact that the CIA isn't allowed to operate within the US, if they were spying on US citizens specifically THAT is the story they should be running with. The whole "consumer network devices are insecure" story is played out and even more so without any real details other than "people who get paid to spy on people are still spying on people".

[Fonzie92]

25 devices... yeah they really hacked into "our" routers.

 

 

[ItsMitch]

2 hours ago, vorticalbox said:

its this sort of reasoning is why they get away with this sort of thing.

 

I have nothing to hide so let them look is exactly the same as i don't need free speech because i have nothing to say. 

 

it eats away at peoples rights and freedoms and we should all stop thinking as such right now, so what if we have nothing to hide you don't get ti look at my stuff. 

 

The eu has wrote up a draft which will make end to end encryption mandatory and back doors into any system illegal and this is exactly what needs to happen. peoples privacy is important. 

I honestly could give two flying fucks if the Government knew of my porn history. I use Tunnel Bear but nothing is 100%.

[Delicieuxz]

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

[vanished]

11 hours ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

I prefer not having to read a novel as well, but not at the cost of almost a complete lack of detail.

 

12 hours ago, Pachuca said:

I like that it's short. Sometimes it's annoying having to read long wordy articles. To each his own

 

[captain_to_fire]

12 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

A bit scary

Meanwhile...

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, hey_yo_ said:

Meanwhile...

I don't get it...

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I don't get it...

Look at the person who retweeted it

[KuJoe]

8 minutes ago, hey_yo_ said:

Look at the person who retweeted it

I saw that, I still don't get it. He basically retweets any tweet with the words "WikiLeaks" and "CIA" in it so it tells me nothing.

[Gravesnear]

12 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

He is a patriot for the truth, which is what counts. Countries are nothing but the sum of their people, and those people are good if they serve the truth, and evil if they work against it. Nationalism is just a form of psychopathism created by drawing false lines in people's consideration.

 

If Snowden hadn't revealed what he had, all the things we're aware of now would still be going, but people would be ignorant of it, and conspiracy theorists would be being ridiculed for being suspicious of things that are actually happening. I'm glad to be able to make decisions to protect my security as a result of Snowden's revelations.

He didn't reveal anything we shouldn't have already known. Scientific American had published an article about a year or two before the Snowden release about the technology DARPA developed that the nsa eventually used. When the Snowden thing happened I was like "didn't we already know this?". Let's get this straight, instead of being a whistleblower and staying in the country to face the courts, he ran off to Russia. You think he stays there for free? He's been selling out Americans since he got there. Why do you think the Russians suddenly became so good at electronic infiltration? Why do you think after spending two decades on the DL Russia finally became emboldened in their foreign policy? Snowden sold us out. Zero doubt in my mind. Plenty of whistle blowers have released documents anonymously and safely. Snowden wanted to be famous.

[Gravesnear]

Not that I agree with the government spying on us, I'm just saying.

[SilicateWielder]

13 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Can they still do it if you are running an old WRT 54G with DD WRT on it?

Dunno, but I have one as well.

 

Anyway, I'm looking into setting up my own proxy server with a firewall.

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, UnbrokenMotion said:

Anyway, I'm looking into setting up my own proxy server with a firewall.

That statement made me chuckle, reminded me of the old Hackers movie.  I would recommend going the VPN route, proxy servers don't do much these days except for evading IP bans on forums which a VPN can do the same thing better.

[SilicateWielder]

Just now, KuJoe said:

That statement made me chuckle, reminded me of the old Hackers movie.  I would recommend going the VPN route, proxy servers don't do much these days except for evading IP bans on forums which a VPN can do the same thing better.

Well, I guess that makes the knowledge learned in the Network securities class I took this year irrelevant. I know some countries are beginning to ban VPNs, do you know what the current status is for the United States?

[KuJoe]

4 minutes ago, UnbrokenMotion said:

Well, I guess that makes the knowledge learned in the Network securities class I took this year irrelevant. I know some countries are beginning to ban VPNs, do you know what the current status is for the United States?

VPNs are alive and well here... just don't expect to watch Netflix, Hulu, or some other streaming services while connected to the VPN. Proxy servers (like SOCKS) are good for hiding your IP from websites but only work for the HTTP/HTTPS protocol, a correctly configured VPN will perform better and protect your IP from being leaked for all protocols. If you want to just hide your IP from websites, then the easiest solution is to download Opera, it has a built in VPN you can enable which covers the HTTP/HTTPS side of things.

 

Other countries have been cracking down on VPNs, but so far no push in the US from what I've heard.

[SilicateWielder]

Just now, KuJoe said:

VPNs are alive and well here... just don't expect to watch Netflix, Hulu, or some other streaming services while connected to the VPN. Proxy servers (like SOCKS) are good for "hiding" your internet browsing but only work for the HTTP/HTTPS protocol, a correctly configured VPN will perform better and protect your IP from being leaked for all protocols. If you want to just hide your IP from websites, then the easiest solution is to download Opera, it has a built in VPN you can enable which covers the HTTP/HTTPS side of things.

 

Other countries have been cracking down on VPNs, but so far no push in the US from what I've heard.

Okay cool, I thought that was the case but I wasn't entirely sure. Thanks!

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, KuJoe said:

"people who get paid to spy on people are still spying on people".

Who would have guessed that this was the case, truly shocking!