On November 2007, Roger Dingledine spoke in an event held by the NSA, talking about his volunteer-run software that enables Internet anonymity. This program is used by millions of people to hide their identities on the online, and it allows information to get from one place to another without identifying where it came from and/or the pathway it took. Tor is very important to journalists and activists in the U.S and other countries in order to communicate without being reprised by their governments.
When former NSA employee Edward Snowden disclosed top-secret NSA information, one of the documents shown revealed that the NSA has been spying on users and unmasking their identities. The NSA was even able to block access to the program once. Human rights groups have been concerned over the fact that the NSA seems to neglect the people's right to privacy. On the other hand, Tor has been used by criminals to transact illegal activities in order to avoid suspicion. Tor still runs today and continues to promote internet privacy and anonymity.
Does the NSA have the right to do spy on us? And if so, to what extent?
Do you support programs such as Tor that enable anonymity, despite the use of such programs for criminal activities?
Additional information: Washington Post, Tor
2 comments:
The NSA situation is very complex. Although Tor - originally sponsored by the US Naval Laboratory - does provide anonymous communication in countries with repressive governments, here in the US it is mainly used for illegal activities such as the distribution of drugs, identity theft, and child pornography. However, I feel the NSA does not have the right to spy on us.
It is extremely unlikely that NSA will be able to catch terrorists through the monitoring of all digital communication - terrorism is rare, and this method is highly inefficient. There will be many false positives, and innocent people marked as "likely terrorists." The NSA's surveillance has no restrictions, and this surveillance may not even preserve national security. Intelligence experts doubt that the NSA played a significant role in past foiled terrorist plots.
In addition, the NSA have the power to prosecute those they deemed offenders, and because the surveillance is secret, offenders have no voice. Joseph Nacchio, who was recently released from prison after being sentenced for insider trading, claims that he was sentenced due to his refusal to give data to the NSA. Whether this is true, I do not know, but the NSA has the ability to hand out such sentences with shaky evidence, which is dangerous for our individual freedoms.
As a frequent user of Tor (for sometimes questionable but totally legitimate purposes), I find the NSA's attacks upon individual users quite frightening. The technique called "Egoistical Giraffe", in conjunction with others, allow the NSA to take control over Firefox users' machines (not just Tor users', it just happens that the Tor Browser Bundle comes packaged with a customized version of Firefox) through the NSA's control over the internet backbone.
Tor, or The Onion Router, is designed so that with appropriate end-to-end encryption, no single waypoint knows both the identity of the sender as well as the content of the message. However, what the NSA has been able to do is exploit a type-confusion security loophole to gain access to a suspect's computer. This is extremely disturbing, as under the Court's interpretation of the 4th Amendment, computers and other digital media are protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures."
Furthermore, even if Tor is a technology frequently used by criminals to conduct their illegal actions, common sense dictates that users of this should still be granted their 4th Amendment Rights.
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