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With Echelon a well-documented reality and AT&T piping all their customer's data to the NSA, ordinary people need a way to fight back against (or at least proactively disagree with) a surveillance system grown out of control. Encryption? Sure, but getting all of your friends to use PGP isn't an easy
sell. "Spook word" pages? These seem more self-indulgent than genuinely disruptive, primarily because they are static pages that, after they manage to get their single red flag thrown up, can be easily checksum'd and ignored happily ever after.
Now clearly, there are words which, if sent through an unencrypted email or chat session, will get it logged for review. I believe the known flagging of specific words (or word combinations) combined with the highly ephemeral nature of online conversations together provide an ideal mechanism for creating 'chatter' which may be able, with enough users, to appreciably decrease the signal-to-noise ratio of online surveillance activities.
Imagine a small client that sits on a user's computer, with the capability to talk to any other client on any other user's computer. The clients can then send messages back and forth to each other using a variety of IM and chat protocols. Each session between clients would consist of a few innocuous computer-constructed messages and then one or two featuring well-known "hot words". Eventually, with enough people running the program, the pipelines would be flooded with talk of all manner of alarming things - that no one except those engaging in surveillance would ever actually see.
What are those words that trigger Echelon?
http://www.theregis...at_are_those_words/
The Register's take on spook words [Tzaquiel, May 10 2006]
European Commission Final Reprt on ECHELON
http://cryptome.org/echelon-ep-fin.htm
[Tzaquiel, May 10 2006]
EFF's Class-Action lawsuit against AT&T
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/
Oh crap. [Tzaquiel, May 10 2006]
[link]
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... So, the guy leaning on that broom over there is?
... NSA. |
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I was going to bun this, but then I
got scared... |
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From the point of view of the security services it might not be that difficult to filter out the greater part of the computer generated messages from the pile. Looking for a course of communication rather than one off messages would be a start. Using software that can graphically analyse sentences would be another. If everyone is using the same generator program then there will no doubt be other 'tells' in the messages created. |
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I can understand why people don't want their mail monitored, but if mine's going to be monitored then let it be something I actually wrote. If you run this you also run the risk that you computer generates a very dangerous message from which you might find it difficult to disassociate yourself, or is open to misinterpretation. Especially if the program you run uses a sophisticated sentence generating algorithm in an attempt to frustrate the analysis mentioned in the first paragraph. |
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Having lots of 'hot' messages to choose from doesn't stop the security services from operating per se - they could simply pick yours and start investigating you - they get more from which to choose. It just prevents them from operating effectively. |
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//I must have missed the onus. Why are we trying to make the NSA's job harder? Is it that we don't want national security, or because we want to help terrorists communicate incognito. I'm confused. [-]// |
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I agree. Including the bone. Whether we like it not, making it difficult for organisations like the NSA isn't going to stop them monitoring anyone. Close and shelf that book please. |
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