July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Google's Web Accelerator is a big privacy risk
by Brian Carini 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, (for IP if you wish) Google is now offering a download and service called Web Accelerator (see http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html ), which purportedly speeds up a broadband connection through proxy and caching. The application routes all page requests (except https) through Google's servers. Each page request is logged by Google. I've said this before: I really like Google, but they are getting dangerous. Google has a great image as a good company. They have engendered a great amount of trust through their "Don't Be Evil" motto. And I think they really mean it. But the fact is that they are stockpiling a perilous amount of personal information about their users. Already, Google logs every search request with its IP address. Google has acknowledged this log in a number of interviews. But, they have never answered why they keep such a log. The search log by itself is not too harmful since the IP address identifies a computer and not a person. The searches cannot easily be traced to a particular person without help from the ISP, unless a person likes to Google their own name frequently. If Google's search log makes you feel uneasy, Google Web Accelerator is much more threatening to privacy. "When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers receive and log your page requests." (http://webaccelerator.google.com/privacy.html ) In other words, every non-encrypted web transaction is recorded permanently at Google. This page request log could be used to create a near-perfect reconstruction of a persons web use. Every page view, every search on every engine, every unencrypted login, any information (including name, address, email address, etc) submitted using the HTTP: GET or POST methods will stored in this page request log. I expect that it would be possible to identify a large proportion of individuals from their page request log. I don't think that Google currently has any evil intent for this data. That would be at odds with their "Don't' Be Evil" motto. I assume the current reason for collecting this data is simply for research. But, over time, slogans change, companies are bought and sold, and data is frequently repurposed, sold, or stolen. Then privacy will suffer. Google admits, "Web Accelerator receives much of the same kind of information you currently send to your ISP when you surf the Web" (see http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html#basics5 ) But the difference is that my ISP doesn't keep that information, along with my search history and every email that I send and receive. Or if they do, they aren't telling me about it. Brian Carini ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Google's Web Accelerator is a big privacy risk
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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Re: [IP] Details on AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into
by Tom Vest 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

NSA Says EFF Hi Dave, Given the increasing salience of such service blocking mechanisms, your subscribers might be interested in the specific deal between Narus and Shanghai Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/73391 It's also worth noting how hardware and services like this have spawned countervailing technologies to obscure the identity/nature of IP traffic flows, e.g.: http://www.numetra.com/ Although Numetra now appears to be positioned to support third-party content producers and aggregators who hope to remain independent from access network owners, it seems likely that end user-oriented products will also emerge to provide an alternative to passive acquiescence to the enclosure of the Net. The resulting arms race may be very good for hardware vendors, but does not bode well for the security and stability of the Internet, IMO. Tom Tom Vest PCH Research Program Manager & Senior Analyst, Internet Economics & Policy CAIDA: Cooperative Assn. for Internet Data Analysis http://www.caida.org On Apr 8, 2006, at 10:37 AM, David Farber wrote: >Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- >people/ >From: steven cherry <steven(a)panix.com> >Date: April 8, 2006 9:39:45 AM EDT >To: dave(a)farber.net >Subject: Re: [IP] Details on AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic >Into NSA Says EFF > > >At 5:41 PM -0400 4/7/06, David Farber wrote: >>From: Ryan Singel <ryan(a)ryansingel.net> >>Date: April 7, 2006 3:53:38 PM EDT >> >>Dave, Mark Klein released a statement with details about what he >>saw and >>did at AT&T. >> >>http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html > > >Dave, > >Not much has been written about Narus, the company whose software >was used. > >Their main products identify and block or bill for VoIP phone calls >made through the equipment of traditional telecom providers. They >have customers for this system in the Mideast, Asia, and South >America. We wrote about them last fall. <http:// >www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct05/1846>. They just signed a deal with >Shanghai Telecom Co this week, by the way. > > Steven > >-- > Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566 > Senior Associate Editor > IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016 > <s.cherry(a)ieee.org> <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org> > > > ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Details on AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Bitcoin?
by Jonas Smedegaard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 08:50:52AM -0500, James Vasile wrote: > I've read through *every* email the FreedomBox Foundation has received > since its inception (and replied to almost all of them). This is a > very passionate, skilled and creative community, and I enjoyed hearing > your ideas and plans quite a bit. I filed as much of it as away I > could so we'll be able to give a report to our for future tech lead > (s/he'll know for example that by far the most mentioned feature was > mesh networking), but mostly I was reading to get an aggregate idea of > what people seek in this project. > > You might also be interested to know that we received contact from > people of diverse backgrounds-- it wasn't all technologists. I find > that encouraging, and I hope you do too. Is that stream of emails public accessible somewhere? If not, why? > One thing that suprised me was the number of requests for Bitcoin > support. What this support consists of wasn't much specified in the > emails. Still, just for the sake of my own personal curiosity, I'd > like to ask you all: does Bitcoin matter to you? How would the Freedom > Plug support it? It is packaged for Debian, available in untable (Sid) and testing (Wheezy). Being rather new, also as upstream code, it certainly could use some actual crash-testing, though: Please anyone interesting in shipping this in future FreedomBoxen strongly consider installing the Debian package yourself on your own machines, play with it, and file bugreports about any and all issues you run across with it. > In the interest of not being an information bottleneck, if you have > questions about the content of those emails, I'll try to answer them. I find it odd having you (or anyone - not personal) proxy in the first place. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Bitcoin?
by Jonas Smedegaard 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 08:50:52AM -0500, James Vasile wrote: > I've read through *every* email the FreedomBox Foundation has received > since its inception (and replied to almost all of them). This is a > very passionate, skilled and creative community, and I enjoyed hearing > your ideas and plans quite a bit. I filed as much of it as away I > could so we'll be able to give a report to our for future tech lead > (s/he'll know for example that by far the most mentioned feature was > mesh networking), but mostly I was reading to get an aggregate idea of > what people seek in this project. > > You might also be interested to know that we received contact from > people of diverse backgrounds-- it wasn't all technologists. I find > that encouraging, and I hope you do too. Is that stream of emails public accessible somewhere? If not, why? > One thing that suprised me was the number of requests for Bitcoin > support. What this support consists of wasn't much specified in the > emails. Still, just for the sake of my own personal curiosity, I'd > like to ask you all: does Bitcoin matter to you? How would the Freedom > Plug support it? It is packaged for Debian, available in untable (Sid) and testing (Wheezy). Being rather new, also as upstream code, it certainly could use some actual crash-testing, though: Please anyone interesting in shipping this in future FreedomBoxen strongly consider installing the Debian package yourself on your own machines, play with it, and file bugreports about any and all issues you run across with it. > In the interest of not being an information bottleneck, if you have > questions about the content of those emails, I'll try to answer them. I find it odd having you (or anyone - not personal) proxy in the first place. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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FC: FBI arrests Russian hacker visiting U.S. for alleged DMCA breach
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45298,00.html Russian Adobe Hacker Busted By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)wired.com) 7:04 a.m. July 17, 2001 PDT LAS VEGAS -- FBI agents have arrested a Russian programmer for giving away software that removes the restrictions on encrypted Adobe Acrobat files. Dmitry Sklyarov, a lead programmer for Russian software company ElcomSoft, was visiting the United States for the annual Defcon hacker convention, where he gave a talk on the often-flawed security of e-books. This would be the second known prosecution under the criminal sections of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, (DMCA) which took effect last year and makes it a crime to "manufacture" products that circumvent copy protection safeguards. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message -----

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Google's Web Accelerator is a big privacy risk
by Brian Carini 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, (for IP if you wish) Google is now offering a download and service called Web Accelerator (see http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html ), which purportedly speeds up a broadband connection through proxy and caching. The application routes all page requests (except https) through Google's servers. Each page request is logged by Google. I've said this before: I really like Google, but they are getting dangerous. Google has a great image as a good company. They have engendered a great amount of trust through their "Don't Be Evil" motto. And I think they really mean it. But the fact is that they are stockpiling a perilous amount of personal information about their users. Already, Google logs every search request with its IP address. Google has acknowledged this log in a number of interviews. But, they have never answered why they keep such a log. The search log by itself is not too harmful since the IP address identifies a computer and not a person. The searches cannot easily be traced to a particular person without help from the ISP, unless a person likes to Google their own name frequently. If Google's search log makes you feel uneasy, Google Web Accelerator is much more threatening to privacy. "When you use Google Web Accelerator, Google servers receive and log your page requests." (http://webaccelerator.google.com/privacy.html ) In other words, every non-encrypted web transaction is recorded permanently at Google. This page request log could be used to create a near-perfect reconstruction of a persons web use. Every page view, every search on every engine, every unencrypted login, any information (including name, address, email address, etc) submitted using the HTTP: GET or POST methods will stored in this page request log. I expect that it would be possible to identify a large proportion of individuals from their page request log. I don't think that Google currently has any evil intent for this data. That would be at odds with their "Don't' Be Evil" motto. I assume the current reason for collecting this data is simply for research. But, over time, slogans change, companies are bought and sold, and data is frequently repurposed, sold, or stolen. Then privacy will suffer. Google admits, "Web Accelerator receives much of the same kind of information you currently send to your ISP when you surf the Web" (see http://webaccelerator.google.com/support.html#basics5 ) But the difference is that my ISP doesn't keep that information, along with my search history and every email that I send and receive. Or if they do, they aren't telling me about it. Brian Carini ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Google's Web Accelerator is a big privacy risk
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

1 0

Re: [IP] Details on AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into
by Tom Vest 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

NSA Says EFF Hi Dave, Given the increasing salience of such service blocking mechanisms, your subscribers might be interested in the specific deal between Narus and Shanghai Telecom: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/73391 It's also worth noting how hardware and services like this have spawned countervailing technologies to obscure the identity/nature of IP traffic flows, e.g.: http://www.numetra.com/ Although Numetra now appears to be positioned to support third-party content producers and aggregators who hope to remain independent from access network owners, it seems likely that end user-oriented products will also emerge to provide an alternative to passive acquiescence to the enclosure of the Net. The resulting arms race may be very good for hardware vendors, but does not bode well for the security and stability of the Internet, IMO. Tom Tom Vest PCH Research Program Manager & Senior Analyst, Internet Economics & Policy CAIDA: Cooperative Assn. for Internet Data Analysis http://www.caida.org On Apr 8, 2006, at 10:37 AM, David Farber wrote: >Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- >people/ >From: steven cherry <steven(a)panix.com> >Date: April 8, 2006 9:39:45 AM EDT >To: dave(a)farber.net >Subject: Re: [IP] Details on AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic >Into NSA Says EFF > > >At 5:41 PM -0400 4/7/06, David Farber wrote: >>From: Ryan Singel <ryan(a)ryansingel.net> >>Date: April 7, 2006 3:53:38 PM EDT >> >>Dave, Mark Klein released a statement with details about what he >>saw and >>did at AT&T. >> >>http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html > > >Dave, > >Not much has been written about Narus, the company whose software >was used. > >Their main products identify and block or bill for VoIP phone calls >made through the equipment of traditional telecom providers. They >have customers for this system in the Mideast, Asia, and South >America. We wrote about them last fall. <http:// >www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct05/1846>. They just signed a deal with >Shanghai Telecom Co this week, by the way. > > Steven > >-- > Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566 > Senior Associate Editor > IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016 > <s.cherry(a)ieee.org> <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org> > > > ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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