Posted on 07/25/2013 3:49:38 PM PDT by Errant
The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.
If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.
"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
Well, I dunno whether Putin would want to peek... at this point if he did peek it might just be for amusement purposes.
If I had anything I wanted to protect, I’d never allow that data to ever be processed on any device that accessed the net. And any storage media used, that is no longer needed, physically destroyed.
Do the names Andrew Breitbart or Michael Hastings ring a bell?
It just occurred to me how useful it would be to them to simply change the passwords of people who they wanted to lock out of the internet. Do enough at the same time and a lot of dissent would come to a grinding halt.
Yeah, the irony of that statement huh? Still, a simple Google search for "Tor" or "anonymous internet browsing" leads you to the rest (absent Google.)
I’d rather not hang out with the child pornographers at Tor
Seriously?! Damn, now I have to find a different anonymous browsing mechanism .... certainly don't want to be associated with that!!
Send the Obama morons the cryptographic hash data and let them spend the next several years trying to reverse them. Nitwits.
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I dont add you to the list...
“Hmmmm, with your password, a government agent could use your account to establish a search history of any sort they may so desire.
In court they could make you look like any sort of monster that fits a narrative.”
If this is proven to be true, it sounds to me like “reasonable doubt” should not be very difficult to demonstrate to a jury. As a defense attorney, I would subpoena the government, and, of course, they won’t cooperate.
This should be interesting. What would have been a “tin foil hat” defense isn’t so funny now, is it?
I guess the next step somewhere along the line is just opening up all our brains without anesthetic and fiddling around in there.
I wonder when millions of us will go Eygyptian on them.
I have been concerned that Tor is actually is an ingenious honey pot.
I’m going to have to go through and change my passwords for every account in the next few days.
They’re not the same right now, but this is getting so ridiculous, that I’m going to be changing all my passwords on a regular basis.
This is so annoying!
That said, you're risking everything by trusting ANY primary means of security against medium to major world power states. You'd better have a secondary, and even a secondary of the secondary means of protecting confidential information transmitted over the internet.
If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. I'm speaking primarily for those in foreign lands engaged in what we consider here as normal activities (e.g., scheduling a Christian Bible study group meeting and etc.).
I bet it is now. Anyone who thinks the FBI/NSA doesn’t know about and has infiltrated it is fooling themselves
Are you absolutely certain that some clever Ph.D. hasn't come up with a method of breaking a hash code?
How about an Indian or Chinese H1-B? They're far smarter than any American, just ask any employer in Silicon Valley...
bump
You are oh so correct. Good post.
This doesn’t do any good. the passwords used by MOST systems are just “gates”...the data behind the gates isn’t encrypted.
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