Phone Taps And Prevalency In Australia

[Quad Damage]

Heres the article which has beena round for a while and is well documented...so the rule of thumb is always watch what you say on the phone and if you need to talk about currently illegal things ring froma payphone

 

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/16/1032054714938.html

[Medicalman]

That article only tells part of an even scarier story. The US NSA has Carnivore, Echelon, and other similar programs that work on computer traffic, radio traffic, satellite transmissions (many phone services and cellular service) and can be installed at major telephone company switching stations.

 

"Phone taps" are court orders allowing a specific telephone # to be tapped and recorded. Although Carnivore was originally promoted as being used with court orders as an "email wiretap", things have changed under Patriot Acts I and II. By using other features designed into Carnivore and similar programs they no longer need court orders for many things and are programmed to pick up certain "key" words from any and all transmissions. If enough key words are caught in a conversation or in a certain sequence(all programmable by NSA/DOJ) then the conversation and all related info (calling #, called #, location of both, time of day , voiceprints of the parties, etc) are recorded in the massive databanks of the multiple Cray supercomputers where they are literally recorded forever. If enough redflags go up, the conversation is directed to a human for immediate attention.

 

Since 9-11, this and likely other even more advanced programs have been proliferating to "stop terrorism". The good news is that because Carnivore, etc. scan literally billions of signals per day, the incoming volume of key words uttered at random by folks overwhelms the system and there aren't enough humans in Maryland to check out each flagged conversation (or email, or whatever). Generally, there have to be a large number of "keys" hit in a single conversation to make it to a human, and those keys are mostly centered around words and phrases used about "attacks", "bomb", and similar terms, but with a few strokes of a keyboard in Maryland, they can just as well look for "daffodil", "petunia", and "sunflower".

 

The NSA has listening posts worldwide and dedicated satellites to do this work. The US is also an "info broker" to "friendly governments". For example if the Australian Govt managed to provide the US with info about an unfriendly foreign govt or organization, the US might be willing to intercept some australian transmissions related to drug dealing and forward the info.

 

Now that is scary stuff. Google "carnivore NSA" , "echelon nsa" etc and see what you find.

 

mm

[Guest]

Has anyone else here read the novel 1984? I think the thought police have arrived. Is there any means of international or even local communication that doesn't get monitored?

 

If you could create a free untapped communications system and sell it you would become richer than Bill Gates overnight. Like those two friends who spent all their millions on the first telecommunications satellite and quickly became billionaires for their brilliance. Every cunt in the world would sign up for an unmonitored phone system.

 

Australia has actually developed quantum teleporatation. Only works for photons at this stage but a laser was transmitted to another part of a laboratory. The military is very interested because signals could theoretically be sent anywhere without any possibility of interception. This is real scifi become reality shit. If turned into a public communications technology it opens up a whole new world in private messaging.

 

I hope it happens. Unfortunately its too early to give a timeline on it happening. Might not appear until we are all dead. Ofcourse I've still got my fingers crossed that a cure for aging will come along too.

[Quad Damage]

if you want encryption programs try pgp encryption. 4000 bit technology and using some of the best supercomputers in the world it would take them a year at least to break your code at which point you will have changed it. They are one of the few firms that havent given their technology to the USA govt so they can intercept your messages as is the requirement with most encryption programs

 

This small world is getting smaller :mellow:

[Guest]

Thanks man. I was thinking along the lines of encryption but assumed it was all geared towards stopping crims and not the feds. Still, with the resources at their disposal the Feds might have found a way around it couldn't they? All those code cracking departments have to be kept busy somehow. A lot of people must have worked on that pgp encryption system too. One might have been bribed.

 

I'm not very familiar with this technology. Do you need it installed at both sender at receiver ends of the communique? How does it work? Most importantly what kind of money are we talking about?

[Guest niall]

Public Key Cryptography systems like PGP, GnuPG etc. are all effectively unbreakable - given a large enough key and sensible precautions and key exchange procedures, it would take the most powerful computers on Earth many, many years to crack a single message.

 

The algorithms are generally public, they don't need to be secret, most rely on the fact that it takes a very, very long time to work out the factors of very big numbers. Like the factors of 6 are 2, 3, 6 and 1 (unless I'm mistaken). Well what are the factors of :

 

156784612798412348975132167846315464212316514845315468135186651534864561534864153486431538

6461548641534864531548645315343104861012312318676451324864231357863516578612318678613248656

12348656123486465123489456123486453132486435135448945156784515678643518461

 

and numbers that are much, much larger? It's effectively impossible to solve problems like this, at our current level of technology. Quantum technology may change all of this, but they're still trying to add simple numbers like 1+1=2 at this stage so it's a few years off yet.

 

Websites that use SSL encryption, like Internet banking, are moderately safe. Certainly safe from the majority of the population, but I expect many large computers can crack 128bit encryption given a moderate amount of time. Websites like Ozstoners, that don't use any form of encryption at all, allow all traffic to and from the website to be intercepted and read by virtually anyone with access to Internet infrastructure between your house and the server where Ozstoners sits. SSL encryption is good enough for banks, it's good enough for us - in my humble opinion.

 

If you want to keep data on your PC safe, encrypt it and store your encryption keys on a read-only floppy disc or CDR and never give your passphrase out to anyone, or type it onto a computer that you don't trust. If your machine has been hacked, all that encryption is useless as soon as you type in your passphrase as your every keystroke can be captured along with your key and the encrypted data (now unencrypted).

 

Computer security is about minimising the chance of something bad happening, providing as many *additional* layers of security as you can - in software, hardware, physically, socially and just using common sense in general. Chances are your PC will be hacked at some point, it's effectively inevitable. All you can do is try to minimise the damage and protect your data by taking it offline onto DVDR or CDR and physically lock it away.

[Guest niall]

I'm not very familiar with this technology. Do you need it installed at both sender at receiver ends of the communique? How does it work? Most importantly what kind of money are we talking about?

Yes - you need the technology at both ends. Think of it like zipping a file, you need something at the other end to unzip it. Encryption is all about making sure that the person on the other end is the same person that you intend the message for - the problem is preventing someone else intercepting it and pretending to be the recipient. In the end it all comes down to trust - and this is how encryption is usually broken, not by decrypting the data but by breaking someone's trust and getting unauthorised access to their key/passphrase to decrypt the data.

 

PGP and GnuPG are free, though PGP has many commercial variants. GnuPG is available for free for Windows and lots of other Operating Systems. What you want to be careful of is exchanging public keys with each other - do it *in person* and if you've never met them before *require identification* like a passport and lots of other ID. NEVER exchange keys over the Net by email etc. Anyone can intercept the message and then send your THEIR key instead, and they'll happily sit between you both decrypting, reading and then re-encrypting each of your messages. You need to establish a significant level of TRUST for this type of encryption to work.

 

Email plugins are available for Outlook and other popular email clients, hopefully Java based plugins will be available in a few years for webmail over SSL and forum based sites like this.

[Quad Damage]

Yep...before you install something like pgp I would make sure your pc is free of trojans, viruses etc etc

 

But as with everything said above...I concur wholeheartedly

 

I wouldnt give your keys to anyone you dont know in person. No offence to the people on these boards or any others but if your exchanging data that needs encryption you better have a real good relationship with them - ie know them in person. Net "mates" can be fucking assholes sometimes...and in fact my own figures are that 90% are...now thats sad

 

It is a shame that ozstoners isnt a secured website...until it is try to keep your pm's deleted as soon as you read them in your inbox and outbox and avoid too many identificatory details. I think i remember reading ozstoner was going to offer the site encryption to paid members? But I could be wrong

[pipeman]

I think i remember reading ozstoner was going to offer the site encryption to paid members? But I could be wrong

no you are correct, it was talked about. but as usual not a lot happened.

[Guest]

Encryption sounds like too much hassle. Everyone would need it for any effective degree of privacy and thats just not reasonable. We aren't a bank and there is little information being exchanged that anyone would bust their balls to obtain. A lot of us r unemployed. I reckon poverty has to be the best form of security. You have nothing to steal so nobody gives a fuck about you. Like has been said before the boys in blue are overworked being cunts to other law breakers who vastly outnumber them and don't have the time to waste on us. Not so long as we don't throw them a big juicy bone like "hey guys I just finished repotting 50 six foot tall ladies at 77 Pitt St, Cubramulla and I'm fuckin exhausted hey".

 

Safety in numbers I reckon. The more members we have posting the less likely the cops are to target anyone. Thats my theory anyway. I don't pretend to know very much about computer security.

 

Hey Pipeman is that you? Nice pic.

Edited April 4, 2004 by Chong