US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Presland]

So Peter, FF is the only safe of the big name browsers?

Well, it depends on how you define 'safe'

It is the only one whose code base is public property, so it does not do such things as 'report back to base' periodically without your knowledge or authority, or have a remotely activatable switch that might do all sorts of other things one can imagine might be contained in proprietary code.

OTOH, it does not protect against browser profiling; nothing does. Have a look at this site and see how identifiable you are simply by the relative uniqueness of your browser footprint. The more security measures you include in your browser, the more unique its footprint becomes. Applying reductio-ad-absurdam says that if you make your browser uniquely protected against all OTHER potential exploits, your actual identity will become uniquely identifiable by the boffins who specialise in this sort of stuff - It's enough to drive you barmy.

So yes, the simple answer is FF is the best browser. But there's more to both privacy/encryption and anonymity than just the browser you use and you simply cannot stay ahead of the NSA on this stuff - what you CAN do is make life just a little more difficult for them and that's about it.

If you become a POI, then there's really no hiding place I'm afraid.

[Peter Lemkin]

So Peter, FF is the only safe of the big name browsers?

Well, it depends on how you define 'safe'

It is the only one whose code base is public property, so it does not do such things as 'report back to base' periodically without your knowledge or authority, or have a remotely activatable switch that might do all sorts of other things one can imagine might be contained in proprietary code.

OTOH, it does not protect against browser profiling; nothing does. Have a look at this site and see how identifiable you are simply by the relative uniqueness of your browser footprint. The more security measures you include in your browser, the more unique its footprint becomes. Applying reductio-ad-absurdam says that if you make your browser uniquely protected against all OTHER potential exploits, your actual identity will become uniquely identifiable by the boffins who specialise in this sort of stuff - It's enough to drive you barmy.

So yes, the simple answer is FF is the best browser. But there's more to both privacy/encryption and anonymity than just the browser you use and you simply cannot stay ahead of the NSA on this stuff - what you CAN do is make life just a little more difficult for them and that's about it.

If you become a POI, then there's really no hiding place I'm afraid.

So, Peter, to make sure I and others understand, is there a difference in the FF included in the Tor Package and the standard plain-vanilla downloadable Mozilla Firefox browser? Same in Linux as in Windoz?

[David Guyatt]

So Peter, FF is the only safe of the big name browsers?

Well, it depends on how you define 'safe'

It is the only one whose code base is public property, so it does not do such things as 'report back to base' periodically without your knowledge or authority, or have a remotely activatable switch that might do all sorts of other things one can imagine might be contained in proprietary code.

OTOH, it does not protect against browser profiling; nothing does. Have a look at this site and see how identifiable you are simply by the relative uniqueness of your browser footprint. The more security measures you include in your browser, the more unique its footprint becomes. Applying reductio-ad-absurdam says that if you make your browser uniquely protected against all OTHER potential exploits, your actual identity will become uniquely identifiable by the boffins who specialise in this sort of stuff - It's enough to drive you barmy.

So yes, the simple answer is FF is the best browser. But there's more to both privacy/encryption and anonymity than just the browser you use and you simply cannot stay ahead of the NSA on this stuff - what you CAN do is make life just a little more difficult for them and that's about it.

If you become a POI, then there's really no hiding place I'm afraid.

Thanks Peter. I think I'm going to have to pour myself a stiff G & T and wrap a cold flannel around my forehead. ::willynilly::

[Peter Presland]

So, Peter, to make sure I and others understand, is there a difference in the FF included in the Tor Package and the standard plain-vanilla downloadable Mozilla Firefox browser? Same in Linux as in Windoz?

No difference to the code. The Tor bundle browser is exactly the same as the regular stand-alone one. The only change is that the one included in the Tor bundle has had many of the default settings changed, especially those in the 'options/security' tab, because the default settings enable all manner of convenience features that leak information about you to those looking for it. The downside is that using the browser in screwed down mode makes for a 'less 'convenient browsing experience' - as the ad men might put it - because those features have been disabled.

Also, there's no difference between the windows and Linux versions, its just that the windows OS COULD (maybe even has been already?) be made to do things with your use of the browser that Linux could not, without the Linux community spotting it quickly and raising merry hell.

[Peter Presland]

Magnificent stuff from Greenwald. The BBC is truly pathetic

[David Guyatt]

I am not in the least bit surprised about Huhne's comments that he and other Cabinet ministers are kept in the dark about GCHQ spying programmes. It's nothing new.

Cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ spying programmes, says Chris HuhneEx-minister says he was in 'utter ignorance' of Prism and Tempora and calls for tighter oversight of security services
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Nick Hopkins and Matthew Taylor
The Guardian, Sunday 6 October 2013 20.47 BST
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Chris Huhne questions whether the Home Office deliberately misled parliament over the surveillance capabilities of GCHQ, pictured. Photograph: GCHQ/MoD/EPA
Cabinet ministers and members of the national security council were told nothing about the existence and scale of the vast data-gathering programmes run by British and American intelligence agencies, a former member of the government has revealed.
Chris Huhne, who was in the cabinet for two years until 2012, said ministers were in "utter ignorance" of the two biggest covert operations, Prism and Tempora. The former Liberal Democrat MP admitted he was shocked and mystified by the surveillance capabilities disclosed by the Guardian from files leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
"The revelations put a giant question mark into the middle of our surveillance state," he said. "The state should not feel itself entitled to know, see and memorise everything that the private citizen communicates. The state is our servant."
Writing in Monday's Guardian, Huhne also questioned whether the Home Office had deliberately misled parliament about the need for the communications data bill when GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping headquarters, already had remarkable and extensive snooping capabilities.
He said this lack of information and accountability showed "the supervisory arrangements for our intelligence services need as much updating as their bugging techniques".
Over the past three months the Guardian has made a series of disclosures about the activities of GCHQ and its much bigger American counterpart, the National Security Agency. Two of the most significant programmes uncovered in the Snowden files were Prism, run by the NSA, and Tempora, which was set up by GCHQ. Between them, they allow the agencies to harvest, store and analyse data about millions of phone calls, emails and search engine queries.
As a cabinet minister and member of the national security council (NSC), Huhne said he would have expected to be told about these operations, particularly as they were relevant to proposed legislation.
"The cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ's Tempora or its US counterpart, the NSA's Prism, nor about their extraordinary capability to hoover up and store personal emails, voice contact, social networking activity and even internet searches.
"I was also on the national security council, attended by ministers and the heads of the Secret [Intelligence Service, MI6] and Security Service [MI5], GCHQ and the military. If anyone should have been briefed on Prism and Tempora, it should have been the NSC.
"I do not know whether the prime minister or the foreign secretary (who has oversight of GCHQ) were briefed, but the NSC was not. This lack of information, and therefore accountability, is a warning that the supervision of our intelligence services needs as much updating as their bugging techniques."
Huhne said Prism and Tempora "put in the shade Tony Blair's proposed ID cards, 90-day detention without trial and the abolition of jury trials".
He added: "Throughout my time in parliament, the Home Office was trying to persuade politicians to invest in 'upgrading' Britain's capability to recover data showing who is emailing and phoning whom. Yet this seems to be exactly what GCHQ was already doing. Was the Home Office trying to mislead?
"The Home Office was happy to allow the NSC and the cabinet let alone parliament to remain in utter ignorance of Prism/Tempora while deciding on the communications data bill."
The draft bill would have given police and the security services access, without a warrant, to details of all online communication in the UK such as the time, duration, originator and recipient, and the location of the device from which it was made. The legislation was eventually dropped after splits in the coalition.
Proper scrutiny of the intelligence agencies was vital, said Huhne, and surveillance techniques needed to be tempered. "Joseph Goebbels was simply wrong when he argued that 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'. Information is power, and the necessary consequence is that privacy is freedom. Only totalitarians pry absolutely."
Huhne, formerly the energy and climate change minister, was jailed this year after he admitted perverting the course of justice over claims his ex-wife took speeding points for him. In February he was sentenced to eight months in prison but was released after serving 62 days.
His intervention comes as concern about the oversight and scrutiny of Britain's spy agencies grows. While former members of the intelligence community insist GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 operate with integrity and within the law, even they have questioned whether the oversight regime is fit for purpose following the Snowden revelations.
Over the last few days a former member of parliament's intelligence and security committee, Lord King, a former director of GCHQ, Sir David Omand, and a former director general of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, have questioned whether the agencies need to be more transparent and accept more rigorous scrutiny of their work.
On Monday, a former legal director of MI5 and MI6 will add his weight to the calls for change. David Bickford told the Guardian Britain's intelligence agencies should seek authority for secret operations from a judge rather than a minister because public unease about their surveillance techniques is at an all-time high.
Bickford said the government should pass responsibility to the courts because of widespread "dissatisfaction with the covert, intrusive powers of the UK intelligence and law enforcement agencies".
"Whether this is based on perception or reality doesn't really matter," he said. "As long as government ministers continue to authorise the agencies' eavesdropping, telephone and electronic surveillance, and informant approval, the public will believe that there is an unhealthy seamless relationship between them." Bickford said it was time for ministers to "step out of the equation and leave the authorisation of these highly intrusive methods to the judiciary".
Bickford was drafted in to MI5 and MI6 following a series of scandals, including the furore over the book Spycatcher, written by the senior former MI5 officer Peter Wright. He worked for almost a decade until 1995 and still advises governments on countering international organised crime and terrorist money laundering.
Bickford said giving judges rather than cabinet ministers responsibility for authorising sensitive operations would "reduce the risk of perception of collusion … and limit the room for accusations of political interference."
"Government may argue that all this is unnecessary as there is adequate oversight of the agencies. However, that cannot substitute for independent judicial authority at the coal face."
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) condemned the way the British government had threatened legal action against the Guardian newspaper unless it destroyed the copy of the Snowden files it had in London.
"WAN-IFRA calls on democratic governments to recognise that acts of intimidation and surveillance against the press risk undermining the fabric of transparent, accountable governance," the organisation's board said in a resolution issued during its meeting on the eve of this week's World Publishing Expo in Berlin, Germany.

[Magda Hassan]

Glenn did great didn't he? And as Max Keiser said on his website
"Enormous douchebag Pauline Neville Jones soils her adult diapers on Newsnight, the stench causes gasps and tears"

Magnificent stuff from Greenwald. The BBC is truly pathetic

[Magda Hassan]

I am not in the least bit surprised about Huhne's comments that he and other Cabinet ministers are kept in the dark about GCHQ spying programmes. It's nothing new.

That's the way they like it.

[David Guyatt]

It's a sublime pleasure to see the much mooted BBC "balance" in operation in this footage.

Bravo Balanced Beeb!

PS, did the in-house security service man approve the questions btw? Just asking... ::

Glenn did great didn't he? And as Max Keiser said on his website
"Enormous douchebag Pauline Neville Jones soils her adult diapers on Newsnight, the stench causes gasps and tears"

Magnificent stuff from Greenwald. The BBC is truly pathetic

[David Guyatt]

According to Greenwald, the whole NSA/GCHQ thing is all about getting a economic advantage - industrial espionage.