[tt] NYT: Seeking Online Refuge From Spying Eyes

Frank Forman checker at panix.com
Sun Oct 20 17:35:30 PDT 2013


Seeking Online Refuge From Spying Eyes
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/seeking-online-refuge-from-spying-eyes/?ref=business&_r=0&pagewanted=print

By JENNA WORTHAM

Consider this scene in "The Circle," Dave Eggers's new novel that
imagines a dystopian future dominated by an omnipotent social
networking company: Mae, the young protagonist, tries to unplug from
her hypernetworked life to go on a covert, solitary kayaking trip.
But when she returns to shore, she is greeted by police officers who
have been alerted to her excursion by several hidden cameras. She
quickly realizes that very little in her life isn't recorded,
tracked and analyzed.

It's a troubling image, one that some fear might not be limited to
works of fiction. In fact, some elements of Mae's scenario have
emerged recently in the news. There was the report that the National
Security Agency can create sophisticated maps of some people's
personal information and social connections. There were the recent
changes to Facebook's privacy settings that will no longer allow
users to hide their profiles from public searches. In addition,
Google recently revealed that it was considering using anonymous
identifiers to track browsing habits online, raising hackles among
privacy advocates who have described it as "the new way they will
identify you 24/7."

And, at the same time, drones are becoming commonplace--used by
the government in counterterrorism efforts and by hobbyists--
prompting discussions about the long-term impact on privacy.

These developments, among others, have spurred the creation of a
handful of applications and services intended to give people respite
and refuge from surveillance, both online and off. They have a
simple and common goal: to create ways for people to use the
Internet and to communicate online without surveillance.

Nadim Kobeissi, a security adviser in Montreal who works on an
encrypted-message service called Cryptocat, said the security and
hacker circles of which he is a part have long suspected that the
government is listening in on online conversations and exchanges but
"have never been able to prove it." He added: "It's been a
worst-case-scenario prediction that all turned out to be true, to a
worrying extent."

If nothing else, the N.S.A. leaks and disclosures have brought these
issues front and center for many people, myself included, who are
troubled by how much of our daily and online interaction is
concentrated in and around a handful of companies that have funneled
data to the N.S.A.

"It's sad that this is the proverbial kick in the butt that needs to
bring awareness to this concept," said Harlo Holmes, who works for
the Guardian Project, a group that is building several
anti-surveillance and privacy applications.

Ms. Holmes says interest has been surging in the Guardian Project's
services, which include tools that let people make phone calls over
the Internet which the organization says cannot be recorded. More
than a million people have downloaded an app called Orbot that
allows users to send e-mails anonymously through mobile devices.

She said it was common to assume that people who want to avoid
detection online are doing illicit things, like trying to buy drugs
or look up illegal content--and that may happen. But it is
certainly not the intent.

She says the Guardian Project and its peers are built for people who
live under governments that don't allow access to the Web or to
certain apps, as well as for people who simply don't like the idea
of their online activity being tracked and monitored. Ms. Holmes
says that most of the tools are used by people in totalitarian
states. "We get a lot of feedback from people who use it to get
access to blogs and sites they can't access because of a firewall,"
she said, referring, for example, to a government blocking access to
Twitter.

Most of these services are still relatively small. For example,
Cryptocat, the encrypted-message service, typically sees peaks of
around 20,000 simultaneous users. In recent months, that number has
grown to 27,000. But it's a far cry from the hundreds of thousands,
or even millions, that mainstream social networking tools and
services can claim.

"As good as all of our intentions are, whatever looks good and is
user-friendly gets critical mass," she said. "That is what is going
to take off."

But those who work on these services say they don't have to compete
directly with the Facebooks, Twitters and Googles of the world. They
just have to offer an alternative, independent space where people
can interact if and when they need to.

Dan Phiffer works on a project called Occupy.here that gives people
access to a private messaging forum by creating small, localized
pockets of Internet access. People who are nearby and whose laptops
or mobile devices detect the network are directed to a discussion
board where they can interact. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street
protests in 2011, the idea was to allow activists and organizers to
interact in a way that would be hard for police officers to track.

His project is naturally resistant to Internet surveillance, "but
its original purpose was not for countersurveillance," he said.
"What I am trying to do is build alternative online spaces for
supporting activists and those who might be sympathetic to their
cause."

Mr. Phiffer also thinks that the project can have much larger
implications and motivate "broader political engagement by offering
a tool for people who are tired of the disregard of their civil
liberties by their government."

Of course, there is no guarantee that the Guardian Project, Mr.
Kobeissi's project, or any others like it are safe from being broken
into by a government or a hacker or another entity. But Mr. Kobeissi
said that there was an upside to all of the disturbing security
disclosures: at least now, he said, the security world can deal with
the information disclosed in leaks "on a per-revelation basis" to
make its own offerings stronger and more secure.

The truth, he said, is that "we are developing software in an
unknown environment, even though we know so much about the threats
being posed."

"The specifics are always changing," he added.

Tools like Cryptocat, he said, are just the impetus for a larger
discussion. "It's not an answer by itself," he said. "It is a
combination of privacy and technology, democratic movement and
political discussion that it is not acceptable to use the Internet
as a surveillance medium."
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