How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer

Sick of government spying, corporate monitoring, and overpriced ISPs? There's a cure for that.

Lately everyone has been worrying about what to do if the government gets too carried away with the censorship of the internet.

This article hits the spot. No matter how hard big brother tries IMO he will never succeed in silencing the masses. People are too creative for a total blackout to occur. When will they ever learn?

THE INTERNET may seem amorphous, but it's at heart pretty physical. Its backbone is a huge array of fiber-optic, telephone, and TV cables that carry data from country to country. To gain access, you need someone to connect your house to that backbone. This is what's known as the "last mile" problem, and it's usually solved by large internet service providers such as AT&T and Comcast. They buy access to the backbone and charge you for delivering the signal via telephone wires or cable lines. Most developed nations have plenty of ISPs, but in poor countries and rural areas, the last-mile problem still looms large. If providers don't think there's enough profit in household service, they either don't offer any or do it only at exorbitant rates.

WHILE MESH networks were created to solve an economic problem, it turns out they also have a starkly political element: They give people—particularly political activists—a safer and more reliable way to communicate.

In an Occupy-style scenario, police may try to shut down texting via Verizon and AT&T only to discover that activists have their own private Serval channel.

Even so, alternative networks are a pretty subversive idea, one that has attracted some strange bedfellows. The State Department recently ponied up almost $3 million to support Commotion, because officials think it could help freedom of speech abroad. But given the revelations about NSA spying (Commotion's developer, OTI, is considering joining a lawsuit to challenge the agency's surveillance program), the software is likely to gain traction among activists here at home. "It makes all the sense in the world," Meinrath says.

The notion of a truly independent global internet may still be a gleam in the eye of the meshers, but their visionary zeal is contagious. It harkens back to the early days of the digital universe, when the network consisted mostly of university scientists and researchers communicating among themselves without corporations sitting in the middle or government (that we know of) monitoring their chats. The goal then, as now, was both connection and control: an internet of one's own.

How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer

If you have attracted the attention of the National Security Agency, you computer is the least of your worries. However If the NSA wants in you system the only way to keep them out is unplugging the damn thing and destroy it.

Oh yes, you can't wipe the hard drive with a cloth.

Unfortunately you can't request a page through a server without that request being logged.
Proxy servers are probably even worse since most encrypt your request tunnel.
Public libraries are often the easiest way to communicate anonymously since you may not be using a machine registered to you.

a reply to: Nickn3

My good buddy got me a bleach bit "like a cloth or something" for Christmas.

Best part is, he voted Hillary haha.

But the best way to keep the NSA out of a computer is.

A. Burn it.

B. Lake.

C. Never connect to Internet and use it in a Faraday Cage.

a reply to: brutus61

During the Arab spring, protestors got around internet black out by using old dial up cables.

Link

They'd have to EMP the planet really... Then their will always be spray paint, walls and pavement.

I know a few people with carrier pigeons too, possibilities are endless if you are desperate.

a reply to: brutus61

How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer

Why would you want to do that and ruin a perfectly good honey pot...

Death Star Plans

The newer version of the Opera browser now has built in VPN with unlimited data transfer. I am not an expert at all in computer security so I am not sure how much a VPN protects you. But it is nice to have it built in and not have to rely on a separate program to go with it.

I have tried proxies before briefly and they didn't always seem to work well as far as speed and whether or not the proxie worked at all.

I have nothing to hide and i do not participate in any illegal activity, but I still would like to be private in that who knows, maybe in the future there are witch hunts over people's online political beliefs, etc.

One thing the article may have overlooked is ICANN.

The are a private organization.

I think they hold the map and system that allocates URL's having the power to allow them to exist or not.

(I can be wrong.)

Can strong magnetic fields still wipe hard drives? If not melting it to molten state might be best lol.

originally posted by: RAY1990

I know a few people with carrier pigeons too, possibilities are endless if you are desperate.

Apparently as far back as the 1960s the NSA were also 'systematically intercepting telegrams' so carrier pigeons may not be such a bad idea.

link

a reply to: brutus61

Back in the day, pre-1990, one would use promiscuous servers in the jump through the last mile. That way it was easy to skim off the first few hundred to a thousand bytes of relevant data. Unfortunately, mlppp and other meshing type systems allow for massive abuse without the use of serious encryption, you need something somewhat better than aes or ssl. I did small system like this in a town of about 1400 people, you find out how many criminals there are very quickly when banking information and nefarious chats can be accessed at each router/computer in the "mesh."

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: Slichter
Unfortunately you can't request a page through a server without that request being logged.
Proxy servers are probably even worse since most encrypt your request tunnel.
Public libraries are often the easiest way to communicate anonymously since you may not be using a machine registered to you.

Yep. All communications travel thru hubs, records centers, whatever.

You think all that storage space is just for 'backup'?

image

a reply to: Xeven

2.5" HDDs just smash.
3.5" are more fun.

youtu.be...

a reply to: Xeven

Thermites a very cheap and effective solution when getting rid of drives

Destroying your computers storage does't erase your internet browsing history. That is also being stored.... derp.

Creating your own internet complete with dishes is one way to get off the main stream. Line of sight that is. Works locally but not over the horizon. Anything broadcast can be intercepted by eavesdropping intelligence agencies. That what they are all about... listening.

Judging by the number of dishes festooning some towers there are lots of networks unattached to the 'regular' internet.

image

The only way to keep "No Such Agency" out of your computer, as stated above, is to not have one.
Their tech is so good, they don't need to get inside.
They look at all packets coming and going and read everything.

I remember, telling a head of a local law enforcement agency, a few years ago, that all traffic from their agency was was monitored. ( no matter what type ) He laughed at me.

Sometime later, some of that intercepted information turned up in Federal court as evidence.

( Can you hear me now ? )

Buck

a reply to: brutus61

Every way and method you can think to transmit. ..cable, towers etc. ...they have access....don't kid yourself.. .in and out.. .everything. ..so encript away.. .still gotta go through something of theirs

A vpn is relitivaly useless if u don't want nsa fbi and cia to see what it doing

U use a vpn to hide from large media coperations

Just a small example is some isps can inject ad's so yes they are reading it and any government agancy just needs a warnt to get it

U can't exactly hide data from a government agancy built to get that data

The problem is simple but complex if u make any data transfer for the public u can't keep them out
The tor network is a good example of a attempt that got compermised

There are even ways to get data wireless from a unconnected computer

The catch is all the data out there is on ur side its not posible to read it all so unless u give them a reason to look they won't be

Why would anyone want to do that---if they can see you you can see them.

originally posted by: brutus61

Sick of government spying, corporate monitoring, and overpriced ISPs? There's a cure for that.

WHILE MESH networks were created to solve an economic problem, it turns out they also have a starkly political element: They give people—particularly political activists—a safer and more reliable way to communicate.

In an Occupy-style scenario, police may try to shut down texting via Verizon and AT&T only to discover that activists have their own private Serval channel.

Even so, alternative networks are a pretty subversive idea, one that has attracted some strange bedfellows.
How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer

Hooray for mesh networks! I'm getting my Open-WRT-based router warmed up even as I type! Anyone else in Woodstock ready to create the first two local nodes of the un-Internet here? Anybody got a webserver running already in the village! Let's meme and rememe this one, folks!

Jai Jai Routeshvara

P.S. There is no way, absolutely no way, to keep the NSA out of a network. If they need a way in to an ad-hoc network they'll find it and use it almost as fast as you can say "zero-day exploit"! Afterall, even if the network itself is all-but-secure, the individual users and devices are most definitely not.