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Big Brother's Magic Lantern

Hieronymus

15:48 / 13.09.02

This from the Village Voice. Beware of "The Magic Lantern." Under the "sneak and peek" provision of the USA Patriot Act, pushed through Congress by John Ashcroft, the FBI, with a warrant, can break into your home and office when you're not there and, on the first trip, look around. They can examine your hard drive, snatch files, and plant the Magic Lantern on your computer. It's also known as the "sniffer keystroke logger."

Once installed, the Magic Lantern creates a record of every time you press a key on the computer. It's all saved in plain text, and during the FBI's next secret visit to your home or office, that information is downloaded as the agents also pick up whatever other records and papers they find of interest.

What. the. fuck.

Saint Keggers

16:02 / 13.09.02

What!!! They need a WARRANT?? What happened to gettting tough on terrorism? Now im at risk from little Johnny and Aunt Sally. What happens if they overthrow the world while the gov is busy getting a warrant?
I think every third day everyone should be more than happy to just hand over their computers..or notebooks or cats. That way we can be patriotic and ensure that our computers are patriotic too. And our cats.

grant

I'd like to move this thread to the Lab, if that's OK.

this stuff kind of creeps me out. i have trouble forming a more cogent response than that.

Hieronymus

16:59 / 13.09.02

Sure, grant. It's best attacked in the Lab anyhow.

As for your lack of response... you're not alone there. I'm still picking up my jaw from the dirt. Though this seemed to help. But only a little

Just... the brazenness of it, I think, is what's doing me in. When did we hand the keys I guess is what I'm wondering? What could I have done more to stop them from even starting? That sort of thing.

grant

17:46 / 13.09.02

I suppose this sort of thing... well, I kind of happened with telephones, I guess. But it's somehow more *part* of the technology that this is possible, it seems.

fondula

00:11 / 14.09.02

If you value your privacy, just read up on computers and networking. Even in these times, it's quite easy to attain almost complete anonimity and privacy. Scared about echelon, magic lanterns, d.i.r.t., carnivore, et cetera? Just use a locked-down unix system, use pgp/gpg, use anonymous proxies, use remailers, use maildrops... I have to admit that personally I put it all aside, and simply don't give a sh*t anymore if anything is spying on me. If you're worried about encryption being broken, consider this: the commercial world is already applying quantum cryptography, so governnments are probably using quantum computers to decypher *anything* for years... Sweet dreams!

Yagg

03:35 / 14.09.02

An addendum to fondula's statement: "I have to admit that personally I put it all aside, and simply don't give a sh*t anymore if anything is spying on me."

A few months ago I was watching "Nightline" and the topic was the ever-popular post-9/11 civil liberties question. I don't recall the name of the particular government suit Ted Koppel was talking to, but he likened the whole thing to drinking out of a firehose. To paraphrase: "We're getting so much information it's just spraying all over the place and we're barely swallonwing any of it." They might be able to snoop on everyone, but finding the stuff they're after is like a needle in a thousand haystacks. I'm not worried, either.

Francine I

04:52 / 14.09.02

They're quite good at finding that needle. Really, the problem they face is more analagous to not knowing what needles to look for. As far as the 'giving it all up' bit goes, the best protection from being snooped in this context, providing nobody's looking for you or your activities particularly, is to not encrypt. Unless everyone decides to encrypt their every-day emails simultaneously for some automagical reason, the ones who do take this path are going to look awfully suspicious.

netbanshee

13:42 / 14.09.02

...as fondula mentioned, encryption, et al is a great way to get by most of the problems. It's not that an individual effort is hard to crack, it's all the extra computer cycles it takes to decrypt a few million messages a day. Encryption is used almost casually by many, so the flag raising isn't as visible as one would think. It works best in bulk.

MJ-12

03:41 / 16.09.02

But keylogging along the lines of Magic Lantern renders encryption moot, as it intercepts everything prior to encryption, as well as the keys used to decrypt things.

fondula

10:11 / 16.09.02

Keylogging is only possible on unsecure systems. No government at all can simply install a keylogger in a decently secured unix system - unless they break open the hardware and install a hardwaresniffer.

w1rebaby

11:38 / 16.09.02

I wouldn't trust any FBI agent to install a hardware sniffer (or, for that matter, a software one). I'd probably come home to find them standing around my PC, scratching their heads and looking for the right sized screwdriver.

I'm not even convinced it wouldn't fox them if I just put a BIOS password on.

MJ-12

13:18 / 16.09.02

Provisions of proposed DRM/Trusted computing legislation would, by some interpretations, make owning such a secure system illegal by itself, regardless of the use to which it is put.

Francine I

18:54 / 16.09.02

It is, I believe, a hardware sniffer that they're talking about here, and I certainly don't think it's installation is beyond them. In fact, some of them are installed externally -- between the PS2 port and the keyboard. While this would be simple for most of you to spot, many wouldn't even check. Further, encryption can raise flags -- it's not used so widely as to make it commonplace. This doesn't mean you'll get snooped for encrypting a dirty e-mail, but it does mean that if you use encryption continually for a period of time, you'll likely wind up on somebody's list. Not necessarily for a knock on your front door, but rather for behavioural pattern matching. This, of course, isn't a concern for the vast majority of people, but it is worthy of note.

w1rebaby

17:55 / 17.09.02

Further, encryption can raise flags -- it's not used so widely as to make it commonplace.

Which is a good reason to encourage people to make it commonplace. It's not like it's that hard to do without it making any real difference to your everyday emailing habits. Even Yahoo webmail has a "send encrypted" option now.

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