PRISM

LoLth

every typewriter developes unique "tells" through use, however, emails can have digital identifiers attached, printers can include a pale spot or series of dots somewhere on the page that acts as a unique identifier.

Problem is, there are only something like 50,000 new typewriters left in stock in the world (article I read on the reg about a two years ago). I remember thinking, "I must pick up one of those before they disappear completely".

silentrust

LoLth wrote: »

every typewriter developes unique "tells" through use, however, emails can have digital identifiers attached, printers can include a pale spot or series of dots somewhere on the page that acts as a unique identifier.

Problem is, there are only something like 50,000 new typewriters left in stock in the world (article I read on the reg about a two years ago). I remember thinking, "I must pick up one of those before they disappear completely".

Does it have to be a new typewriter? I have one of the Olivetti models from the Sixties which belonged to my Granny when she trained as a typist and she taught me how to type on it too.

I think your only issue has to do with obtaining ink ribbons - since I'm a crazed survivalist I buy them 10 at a time from eBay but even one will last you a long time. Without wanting to convert you to the prepper mindset too, consider the fact that you'll still be able to type at speed even if there's a power-cut! (Presuming it's not too dark!)

LoLth

y'know I'm sort of in two minds about this whole PRISM thing.

I get that "I've nothing to hide so what do I care" is not a good attitude to privacy.

I get that we all want to have some way to communicate without others eavesdropping.

I know, for a fact, that while the majority of traffic through secure channels / IRC / SKYPE etc is benign, there is an element that uses those tools to enable pretty sick and twisted stuff on a scale never before capable in society's history.

I don't care if Alice wants to send Bob a copy of her latest CD purchase - imho that sort of technological utility should already be developed and in place. Make it possible legally and *then* stamp on the illegals.

I don't care if Auntie B wants to send nekkid pics of herself to Uncle Joe's best friend. That's their business.

I do care when the big stuff happens. You know, the stuff they use to scaremonger - terrorist attacks , sedition, incitement to violence , and I get how a lack of privacy can lead to a better quality of life for everyone (no more anonymous child abuse sites, no more grey market online drug trade or human trafficking).

PRISM in and of itself, is not, imho a bad thing. Now, stop shouting at me and read on please .

Its like speed limits.

All cars can go 2, 3 or four times the speed limit. The speed limit is there to help reduce accidents and to protect, not only the driver of the car but also the pedestrians, the drivers of other cars (boy racer can go wrap himself around a lamppost and good riddance just as long as the cost of repairing that lamppost and cleaning up the mess doesn't affect anyone else and or course, no-one else gets hurt in the incident).

There are gardai that enforce the speed limits. They don't pull over or even recognise the vast majority of cars. they only look at the anomalies.

So, whats this got to do with PRISM?

I have no issue with being able to view private information *when there is a need to view private information to safeguard others*.

The issue I have with the current situation is:
1. the secrecy. Be open about it. we all see the speed limit signs, we all know what happens if you break the law. Make it obvious what the process is. Help the general public realise that this is a good thing and not something that needs to be hidden away because its so wrong.

2. Data retention: how long is the data stored for? Is there a LoLth file somewhere that can be dragged up at any time that I dont know about? Who has access to it? Under what circumstances? A better solution would be an intelligent machine that monitors and flags, possibles get filed for X amount of time until they are confirmed and flagged, if not confirmed they are discarded and paid no more heed to.

3. Feckin Merkens..... a global, or close to global, PRISM would be good. A PRISM owned and controlled by a single country and used for the good of that country alone (and by helping their allies they help themselves) is not good and I can understand the outrage.

imho, hand over PRISM to Interpol. Let them use it for what it can be used for best, protecting the public. The internet is trans-national, so should the police force that polices it. (and they really need to sort out this whole jurisdiction of the internet thing.)

Capt'n Midnight

LoLth wrote: »

every typewriter developes unique "tells" through use, however, emails can have digital identifiers attached, printers can include a pale spot or series of dots somewhere on the page that acts as a unique identifier.

https://www.eff.org/issues/printers - it's colour printers mostly

You could try an old printer , perhaps a dot matrix, but ribbon wear and pin wear would show up


print on acetate and then heat it or use acetone or something to blur it up
and unless everyone else does it you'll stand out like a sore thumb

Walker34

What a difference a few decades can make......when I was a kid the priest used regularly pray for the poor people living in the USSR.....under the of tyranny of oppressive surveillance....... now this on Russia Today`s front page. I guess the Iron curtain was a reasonable move by Joe Stalin in hindsight, in view of their recent experience with their western Allies.....Germany in particular.

Here is what will stop the snooping...............bad publicity for the USA and its Corporations. Maybe all they will do is rotate a few contractors .....or re-invent them with a new corporate name and the same staff less R. Snowden.

Microsoft does not like its name associated with such goings on, it damages their expensive Corporate image. Don`t ask them for backing for your bid for the White House John (Brennan)

http://rt.com/usa/microsoft-nsa-snowden-leak-971/

Capt'n Midnight

Walker34 wrote: »

What a difference a few decades can make......

Anyone remember the fuss over the NSA's Clipper chip, secret algorithm and key escrow 20 years ago ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Walker34

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Anyone remember the fuss over the NSA's Clipper chip, secret algorithm and key escrow 20 years ago ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Yeah but back then the Internet was a curiosity and not in most homes.....I got my first decent pc in 94 and internet was a dialup modem and windows for workgroups was where it was at. The vast majority of homes were not on the internet and so the primary source of surveillance was not around......and please dont digress into a debate about what happened when and who was there....its history.

Khannie

LoLth wrote: »

I have no issue with being able to view private information *when there is a need to view private information to safeguard others*.

This it the problem. How do you define "safeguard" and where do you draw the line? Obviously I don't want terrorist scum, paedo's and the like getting to use the internet to make life easy for themselves.

However! There needs to be some common sense about it. We have roads with cars on them. People die because of that and yet still we build roads and cars. Currently it looks like "safeguard" means "hoover up the internet, sure it might save a life". Well that's way over the line to me.

I was having an email exchange with a friend the other day about a private matter and it occurred to me that I need to assume that this exchange was being stored in an NSA data warehouse somewhere. The chances of it being looked at were very small, but the idea that it might be looked at on a whim, simply for mere curiosity (as a non-US citizen, you would assume that there are no safeguards on my data), was very disconcerting.

Lastly, let's be honest here, the bad guys aren't really stupid enough to not encrypt the crap out of everything and / or host their own servers. Their opsec is going to be better than using gmail or skype. It's silly to think otherwise.

clairefontaine

Khannie wrote: »

This it the problem. How do you define "safeguard" and where do you draw the line? Obviously I don't want terrorist scum, paedo's and the like getting to use the internet to make life easy for themselves.

However! There needs to be some common sense about it. We have roads with cars on them. People die because of that and yet still we build roads and cars. Currently it looks like "safeguard" means "hoover up the internet, sure it might save a life". Well that's way over the line to me.

I was having an email exchange with a friend the other day about a private matter and it occurred to me that I need to assume that this exchange was being stored in an NSA data warehouse somewhere. The chances of it being looked at were very small, but the idea that it might be looked at on a whim, simply for mere curiosity (as a non-US citizen, you would assume that there are no safeguards on my data), was very disconcerting.

Lastly, let's be honest here, the bad guys aren't really stupid enough to not encrypt the crap out of everything and / or host their own servers. Their opsec is going to be better than using gmail or skype. It's silly to think otherwise.

My suspicion is the reason everyone is under surveillance is because political correctness has frozen government agencies from profiling. So instead of focusing in radicalised jihadist individuals, everyone is now a possible source of intelligence. The Fort Hood incident is referred to as workplace violence, not a jihadist attack. Even the language has changed.

Veering OT for a second. I understand LOLTHS double minded ness about this. Guiliani and Leiter were broadcast in a public discussion on the NSA scandal. Guiliani made a lot of sense, as he usually does, but the direct results of what he was suggesting would mean a militarised police force. Now, yes, would this stop smaller scale jihadists like what we saw in Boston, Quite possibly. But it would also mean a militarised police force, and I don't really want that.

Having grown up in the Cold War, I accept espionage is just a part of life at this point, but the nature of this war combined with political correctness, means we are all possible suspects. That is why we are all being surveillance, body searched in airports, stopped to have luggage checked, handbags searched in NYC subways, etc.

And now the same goes for communications. It's like having your handbag checked.

Capt'n Midnight

Walker34 wrote: »

Yeah but back then the Internet was a curiosity and not in most homes.....I got my first decent pc in 94 and internet was a dialup modem and windows for workgroups was where it was at. The vast majority of homes were not on the internet and so the primary source of surveillance was not around......and please dont digress into a debate about what happened when and who was there....its history.

I'm not debating, I'm just showing that people are knee jerking over PRISM, it's not the first and it won't be the last systematic invasion of privacy.

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.

And the best predictor of the future is the past.

So if the NSA & co. wanted that sort of access before it's unlikely they would want less now.

Even back then storage costs were falling , the old rule of thumb that all your historic data is the same size as what will be stored in the next 18 months applies. So there is no reason to suppose any of the data deemed worthy of storage in the past has ever been deleted or will ever.


Clipper was big news back in 1994, for a while people were worried it might become mandatory - remember the whole encryption=munitions thing. TPM is a fact of life now though.

from back then
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-06-12/business/9406100501_1_encryption-clipper-chip-national-security-agency
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1994/06/12/foiling-the-clipper-chip.html


Also none of the PRISM stuff should come as a shock to anyone who was following the Patriot Act , esp Section 215

clairefontaine

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I'm not debating, I'm just showing that people are knee jerking over PRISM, it's not the first and it won't be the last systematic invasion of privacy.

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.

And the best predictor of the future is the past.

So if the NSA & co. wanted that sort of access before it's unlikely they would want less now.

Even back then storage costs were falling , the old rule of thumb that all your historic data is the same size as what will be stored in the next 18 months applies. So there is no reason to suppose any of the data deemed worthy of storage in the past has ever been deleted or will ever.


Clipper was big news back in 1994, for a while people were worried it might become mandatory - remember the whole encryption=munitions thing. TPM is a fact of life now though.

from back then
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1994-06-12/business/9406100501_1_encryption-clipper-chip-national-security-agency
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1994/06/12/foiling-the-clipper-chip.html


Also none of the PRISM stuff should come as a shock to anyone who was following the Patriot Act , esp Section 215

Individual states and nations can stop this by insisting on a probably cause warrent.

hooplah

clairefontaine wrote: »

My suspicion is the reason everyone is under surveillance is because political correctness has frozen government agencies from profiling. So instead of focusing in radicalised jihadist individuals, everyone is now a possible source of intelligence.

ah c'mon, its a problem with political correctness?

Everyone is targetted because it's possible and relatively easy, not because of political correctness. Data and metadata is held on to, again because its easy and because you don't know what its possible to do with huge quantities of information until you have them. As an example look at supermarket loyalty cards. Target, a huge retailer in the US looked at the purchases of ladies registered in a 'baby club' and realised after sometime that by checking what other people bought they could tell who was likely to be pregnant.
More details here.

In a similar way a security agency could gather information on everyone for a period of time. When you find people who are confirmed or suspected of unwanted behaviour you take a closer look at what they do online, or electronically. You see if theres a pattern, and then you look for the same pattern elsewhere. It could point to other people doing something you don't want them to. No government or security agency, or retailer, or business is going to not use that information.

clairefontaine

hooplah wrote: »

ah c'mon, its a problem with political correctness?

Everyone is targetted because it's possible and relatively easy, not because of political correctness. Data and metadata is held on to, again because its easy and because you don't know what its possible to do with huge quantities of information until you have them. As an example look at supermarket loyalty cards. Target, a huge retailer in the US looked at the purchases of ladies registered in a 'baby club' and realised after sometime that by checking what other people bought they could tell who was likely to be pregnant.
More details here.

In a similar way a security agency could gather information on everyone for a period of time. When you find people who are confirmed or suspected of unwanted behaviour you take a closer look at what they do online, or electronically. You see if theres a pattern, and then you look for the same pattern elsewhere. It could point to other people doing something you don't want them to. No government or security agency, or retailer, or business is going to not use that information.

If states demanded a probable cause warrant, they would be forced to profile. PC has put a lien on profiling radicalised Muslims. Guiliani pointed out that the Boston bombers were Russian refugees who attained political asylum in the US. This is no easy feat. So they proved their motherland was persecuting them, and then one of them returns to that same land? Would that not ring alarm bells? Sure it does, but PC has put such a prohibition on profiling, that they instead are wasting resources on invading EVERONES privacy.

[-0-]

Torqay wrote: »

How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

A "team sport"...

You posted this already.

clairefontaine

Pigeon carrier everybody.

Torqay

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Anyone remember NSAkey ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

Not too long ago I was ridiculed and being laughed at here for pointing out that Microsoft has implemented a facility into Windows which allows them to search the computers of their victims, err, customers and reserved the right to delete content and applicatications as they see fit or where they're "legally required to do so". Guess, now it's only the NSA and their "team mates" who are laughing...

[-0-] wrote: »

You posted this already.

Sorry, my bad... deleted.

hooplah

clairefontaine wrote: »

If states demanded a probable cause warrant, they would be forced to profile. PC has put a lien on profiling radicalised Muslims. Guiliani pointed out that the Boston bombers were Russian refugees who attained political asylum in the US. This is no easy feat. So they proved their motherland was persecuting them, and then one of them returns to that same land? Would that not ring alarm bells? Sure it does, but PC has put such a prohibition on profiling, that they instead are wasting resources on invading EVERONES privacy.

Even when it was the bears, I knew it was the immigrants

jmcc

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Clipper was big news back in 1994, for a while people were worried it might become mandatory - remember the whole encryption=munitions thing. TPM is a fact of life now though.

They were fascinating times. Those who were there remember them but there is a lot of technology churnalists who claim to have been there and want to be considered "experts" on privacy and related issues. They were not there and they are not experts. The worst thing is that the public often relies on the wibbling of these pseudo-experts, especially in the Irish media, and misses the mind-numbingly obvious erosion of privacy that occurs daily.

Regards...jmcc

silentrust

jmcc wrote: »

They were fascinating times. Those who were there remember them but there is a lot of technology churnalists who claim to have been there and want to be considered "experts" on privacy and related issues. They were not there and they are not experts. The worst thing is that the public often relies on the wibbling of these pseudo-experts, especially in the Irish media, and misses the mind-numbingly obvious erosion of privacy that occurs daily.

Regards...jmcc

Bruce Schneier FTW

Capt'n Midnight

riclad wrote: »

IF you had said 2 years ago all usa gmail , webrowsing , mobile phone metadata was being recorded AND there,s backdoors in skype, and windows os,
FOR nsa interception ,
you would have been labeled a leftwing paranoid extremeist.

India is the latest country when Blackberry are giving a government access to consumers messages, just like they've been doing in Saudi for the last three years.

India http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23265091
Saudi http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/10/blackberry-saudi-arabia-ban-lifted

I'll state the bleedin' obvious.

If company X in country Y is ratting out it's customers then it's a cert that they are also ratting out their customers on the sly in country U too, especially when country U is one of their biggest markets or there are huge potential tax questions in the air, it's just good business.

jmcc

riclad wrote: »

IF you had said 2 years ago all usa gmail , webrowsing , mobile phone metadata was being recorded AND there,s backdoors in skype, and windows os,
FOR nsa interception ,
you would have been labeled a leftwing paranoid extremeist.

By whom? The pondscum intellects in the Irish technology media? Anyone who had a clue about electronic intelligence and communications would probably have considered that it would have been highly improbable that such actions were not taken. Even two years ago, Wired had covered major tapping allegations. Bamford, Hagar and Campbell had all covered technical intelligence for years and their books and articles were widely published.

And the uk is sending masses of data direct to the nsa ,
from internet cable taps.

That kind of data interchange would have been going on for decades.

IS THERE loads of muslim terrorists in brazil.
i dont think so.

And how would you know? Do you have the intelligence assets on the ground to verify your claim? Do you have communcations data that can be analysed to exclude that possibility?

IT Seems this spying is going on wherever the us government can reach ,
eg against usa allies and other countrys.

States have interests to protect and most modern states will have some kind of intelligence service even if it is not called an intelligence service.

IN the last 3 years theres alot of hype about big data,
cloud computing.

Mostly from marketing types who are just trying to sell the services and hardware.

YEAH ,put all your data in the cloud,
where it can be accessed by us intelligence service s.

The threat environment is not limited to US intelligence. There are others equally as interested, far more aggressive and not limited by legislation.

it follows pournelles law of bureaucracy ,

You might never have heard of a magazine called 'Byte'. It was the main magazine for computer programmers and techies back about twenty years ago. Most techies read it for the articles on coding and hardware. There was a very good section in it by Steve Ciarcia ("Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar"). Well eventually the head up the ass "technology" / lifestyle journalists of the kind seen in the Irish media today took over there and the management of Byte decided to pay these people instead of keeping Ciarcia's section running. Instead of hardware we got to read about Jerry's travails with the latest bit of kit that he sometimes failed to get working properly. The magazine went to hell and was sold to a company that published a Windows magazine. They eventually closed it down because it lost so many readers. Quoting Pournelle's law of anything might get oohs and aaahs from technology churnalists and SciFi readers but it might be better to quote Bruce Schneier or some other major authority.

Regards...jmcc

Capt'n Midnight

jmcc wrote: »

The threat environment is not limited to US intelligence. There are others equally as interested, far more aggressive and not limited by legislation.

If you want to make chips you'll have to spend about $10,000,000,000 on a fab. But if you don't trust the vendors you might not have too many other options.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/22/india_homegrown_chips_broadband_vendors/

India’s national security paranoia reached new levels this week as reports emerged that all foreign vendors have been banned from supplying networking kit for its national broadband project, while the government wants to produce its own chips for use in sensitive installations.

The government has previously decided not to allow China’s Huawei and ZTE to tender for its national fibre optic network (NFON) project, due to the national security concerns raised last November by a US House Intelligence Committee report.

New Delhi has now gone a stage further by excluding the likes of Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks from the list of vendors eligible to supply the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) infrastructure selected for the roll-out, Economic Times reported.

Or find a major Israeli player in the global comms market that hasn't been accused of spying by reliable sources going years back.
Amdocs / Comverse Infosys ...
Or the multinationals that have sensitive stuff developed there. Intel , Checkpoint, even Microsoft Security Essentials was developed there.

Walker34

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If you want to make chips you'll have to spend about $10,000,000,000 on a fab. But if you don't trust the vendors you might not have too many other options.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/22/india_homegrown_chips_broadband_vendors/

Or find a major Israeli player in the global comms market that hasn't been accused of spying by reliable sources going years back.
Amdocs / Comverse Infosys ...
Or the multinationals that have sensitive stuff developed there. Intel , Checkpoint, even Microsoft Security Essentials was developed there.

Sure even Jesus himself had a listening post in the Garden of Getsemeny.......that's how he could reveal at the Last Supper that there was a mole in the organisation, and one of them would shop him to the Feds. I'm sure that's the kind of pitch Cheney uses when looking for additional NSA funding.

silentrust

jmcc wrote: »

By whom? The pondscum intellects in the Irish technology media? Anyone who had a clue about electronic intelligence and communications would probably have considered that it would have been highly improbable that such actions were not taken. Even two years ago, Wired had covered major tapping allegations. Bamford, Hagar and Campbell had all covered technical intelligence for years and their books and articles were widely published.

That kind of data interchange would have been going on for decades.

And how would you know? Do you have the intelligence assets on the ground to verify your claim? Do you have communcations data that can be analysed to exclude that possibility?

States have interests to protect and most modern states will have some kind of intelligence service even if it is not called an intelligence service.

Mostly from marketing types who are just trying to sell the services and hardware.

The threat environment is not limited to US intelligence. There are others equally as interested, far more aggressive and not limited by legislation.

You might never have heard of a magazine called 'Byte'. It was the main magazine for computer programmers and techies back about twenty years ago. Most techies read it for the articles on coding and hardware. There was a very good section in it by Steve Ciarcia ("Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar"). Well eventually the head up the ass "technology" / lifestyle journalists of the kind seen in the Irish media today took over there and the management of Byte decided to pay these people instead of keeping Ciarcia's section running. Instead of hardware we got to read about Jerry's travails with the latest bit of kit that he sometimes failed to get working properly. The magazine went to hell and was sold to a company that published a Windows magazine. They eventually closed it down because it lost so many readers. Quoting Pournelle's law of anything might get oohs and aaahs from technology churnalists and SciFi readers but it might be better to quote Bruce Schneier or some other major authority.

Regards...jmcc

Re: Muslim Extremists in Brazil, officially Brazil has no Terrorists as very sensibly most Latin American countries are reluctant the kind of far-reaching laws we have in the US and UK, remembering the petty banana republic dictators of yesteryear.

The President of Brazil herself was captured and tortured by the former military junta on a number of occasions in the name of "state security", "anti-terrorism" and so forth, perhaps the rest of the world should sit up and take notice..!

silentrust

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

India is the latest country when Blackberry are giving a government access to consumers messages, just like they've been doing in Saudi for the last three years.

India http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23265091
Saudi http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/10/blackberry-saudi-arabia-ban-lifted

I'll state the bleedin' obvious.

If company X in country Y is ratting out it's customers then it's a cert that they are also ratting out their customers on the sly in country U too, especially when country U is one of their biggest markets or there are huge potential tax questions in the air, it's just good business.

As I understand it, regular user's communications can be intercepted but business e-mails sent via BB Enterprise server will apparently be safe.

From what I remember the latter isn't down to the altruism of the Indian government so much as that business servers use their own encryption scheme so it's not possible to install a backdoor at this stage. Still, I wouldn't hold my breath!

Of course if you're using an Android phone and sending e-mails via GPG then these problems disappear altogether but I suppose this is trickier to set up, plus the fact that device encryption has only recently become available for Android phones, let's hope that some customers vote with their feet in light of this!

Capt'n Midnight

silentrust wrote: »

As I understand it, regular user's communications can be intercepted but business e-mails sent via BB Enterprise server will apparently be safe.

Which completely misses the point. It's not about how much access India say they have , it's that BB have a history of selling out their customers in some markets. And that means the technology to do this in every other market is field proven and ready to go.


NY Times reporting on China almost certainly having complete access to Blackberry emails back in 2006.

More links
https://www.accessnow.org/blog/telco-hall-of-shame-blackberry

And again in case anyone misses the point. This is not about Blackberry handing over access. It's that most major comms companies will bend over backwards if given enough pressure or incentive.


There is no question that the authorities in India are concerned about terrorism , there is no question that the Arab Spring and it's fallout are a concern in Saudi. And IMHO there is no question that comms companies doing business in those parts of the world will cooperate with the powers that be (remember the fun and games with internet during the arab spring ?) have refined snooping techniques. And they are probably being applied secretly in other countries too.

silentrust

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Which completely misses the point. It's not about how much access India say they have , it's that BB have a history of selling out their customers in some markets. And that means the technology to do this in every other market is field proven and ready to go.


NY Times reporting on China almost certainly having complete access to Blackberry emails back in 2006.

More links
https://www.accessnow.org/blog/telco-hall-of-shame-blackberry

And again in case anyone misses the point. This is not about Blackberry handing over access. It's that most major comms companies will bend over backwards if given enough pressure or incentive.


There is no question that the authorities in India are concerned about terrorism , there is no question that the Arab Spring and it's fallout are a concern in Saudi. And IMHO there is no question that comms companies doing business in those parts of the world will cooperate with the powers that be (remember the fun and games with internet during the arab spring ?) have refined snooping techniques. And they are probably being applied secretly in other countries too.

I appreciate you might have wanted to make a more general point, I saw one thing that you said and chose to expand on it. These kind of things are going to happen when you have a discussion Captain, please make your peace with it rather than make rude comments, there's a good chap.

riclad

MANY business,s use blackberry for email ,
if their emails can be intercepted than the whole point of buying blackberrys is gone.

Theres a good article on pcmag.com,
by dvorak, Can we trust microsoft.
IT says ms gave more info to nsa than most companys ,with backdoors in ms office,windows 7,8, ose,s .
HE says steve jobs strongly resisted giving user data to nsa .
Obviously its hard to report on this .
Companys cannot discuss court orders from the nsa in detail in public .
its classified information.
MAYBE we will see more companys switching over from gmail ,
and microsoft products to provide more privacy to european users.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421733,00.asp

Why would any non usa government buy ms products now?
IF they care at all about their citizens privacy .

Even a former judge from the FISA court has said nsa is out of control ,
ihas gone to far on mass surveillance of phone calls and usa citizens web browsing.

Khannie

Oh I'm sure this has hit gmail hard. They make quite a bit of money from hosting companies email. There is no way in hell I would host my company email with them now.

I remember the FT saying that after their hack they were glad with how quickly being on gmail allowed them to get reset. Looking pretty costly now. Who's gonna send email to a newspaper that they know is being hosted by a company that hands over data to the NSA?

Gavin

Let's face it, doesn't matter if your email is hosted on Gmail, or Yahoo, or on your own private box. If the email travels over the internet to get to it's destination, GCHQ/NSA will grab it. If you want to keep the email contents confidential, you have to use encryption.