…because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law…
…VPNs might protect you against garden-variety criminals, but the intentional commingling of origin/destination points by VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept (and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will)…
Certainly the NSA isn’t concerned about “incidental collection.” It’s never been too concerned about its consistent “incidental” collection of US persons’ communications and data in the past and this isn’t going to budge the needle, especially since it means the NSA would have to do more work to filter out domestic communications and the FBI would be less than thrilled with any efforts made to deny it access to communications it doesn’t have the legal right to obtain on its own.
Since the government won’t do this, it’s up to the general public, starting with everyone sharing the contents of this letter with others. VPNs can still offer considerable security benefits. But everyone needs to know that domestic surveillance is one of the possible side effects of utilizing this tech.
Whereas not using a VPN will subject one to… domestic surveillance.
I was under them impression that just using the internet in America might subject you to domestic surveillance.
Honestly they’d probably throw you on a list for not using the internet lol.
Yes, but with hundreds of millions of people online, they still need ways to cut and sift the data as they identify… well the “demographics” they want. So using a VPN might make you stand out as more technologically included, or more likely to be hiding something. Either way things they might like to know as they build profiles on all Americans.
I’m surprised they’re not just buying the data but it’s nice that our taxpayers are footing the bill either way for this little service.
lol, what a bunch of liars. Americans don’t have any privacy protections to waive
Oh nooo, we won’t be protected by the law they can’t be arsed to follow anyway? Whatever will I do when they surveil my encrypted VPN traffic?
Store now, decrypt later. Make sure your VPN is using quantum-safe encryption algorithms with perfect forward secrecy. They are storing ALL traffic that goes outside the country (probably domestic traffic too, realistically).
Don’t you think that would take too much storage space?
They can probably use heuristics to keep the 0.1% most interesting traffic (eg traffic that flows towards servers that isn’t too large, that’d catch everything you send to your bank without breaking the budget to store)
Wonder how many individual encrypted copies of bee movie they will be storing!
Technically true, you should choose your VPN provider carefully and not opt for the cheapest one right on.
In practice however, it’s safer than whatever surveillance US is trying to implement by forcing down US made routers.
VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept
Lol. Then they go and immediately say:
and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will
In other words, they don’t gaf about your sovereignty, and will monitor communications in any way they want, legally or otherwise.
They’ve been illegally digging into domestic communications for decades. Stallman and Snowden (to name a couple) exposed that a long time ago. Hell, the USA government exposes themselves all the time, the USA people just choose to ignore it.
Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law…
LOL what privacy protections? The NSA has proven time and time again that they don’t give a single shit about the law, certainly now more than ever.
What do I trust more: Legal protections nobody cares to enforce and could be a multi year battle in court, or well verified strong cryptography.
It’s not the cryptography you have to trust. It’s the other end of the tunnel. A free VPN most probably sells your data. Nobody offers free services for actually free.
I don’t use free VPNs
Respectfully, this is a bit more nuanced than that. There are free VPNs ran by non profits supported fully by donations. Yes somebody is paying for it but it’s people donating to the services.
For example there is an open source application called Bitmask that has 2 VPN providers by default, Riseup VPN and the Calyx Institute.
You can download the Bitmask app itself or download the RiseupVPN app which is based on Bitmask but just pre configured to only use that single Riseup provider.
You have to trust them though. That’s my point.They may say they are funded only by donations and still sell your data.
In fact the first link says the same as I do as the first phrase. When using a VPN, you are moving your trust from your ISP to your VPN provider.
Of course there may be exceptions that are actually free and don’t sell your data. But the ones that sell your data will rarely state so.
Is this another good reason to switch to HeadScale or Netbird?
Idk what either of those are. I don’t endorse any VPN. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter how strong the encryption algorithm is, you still have to trust your provider.
VPNs have the exact same power over you as ISPs. Using a VPN to avoid your ISP is just kicking the can down the road. That’s why you better choose a VPN that you trust.
Hey, just so you know. Trying to hide from us “totally not spying on you” might force us to totally spy on you.
Time to spread the free word of Tor to everyone.
but i2p
I wasn’t crazy about i2p. I really loved Freenet and Zeronet
Doesn’t that have the same problem?
The word is appreciated, but a link would be better…
Doesn’t tor have the same problem?
They spy on domestic communications too, with the 5 eyes arrangement, they have their allies scoop up the information and share it back with them, even as it’s just the US doing the entire thing with a couple of foreign names on the masthead. Fucking lawyers.
For some unhinged reason, Trump wanted to kick Canada out of the five eyes last year, so as a response we just stopped sharing information with the US, and the US just kind of Kicked themselves out.
Are they retards or did they forget the NSA already does this illegally?
Yes to the first part
So, I am a remote worker in Healthcare. Obviously, I need to use a VPN to connect to work to ensure that communication is secure. But because I have a job that requires secure access, I am a suspected domestic terrorist?
No, because there are different types of vpn connectivity.
A point to point vpn is what employees use to connect to the office. The intention is to encrypt the connection so a 3rd party can’t access ithe data going through it. The FBI/NSA won’t care about this type of vpn because your work knows who you are and logs all traffic generated by you which could be subpoenaed by the government.
Connecting to a vpn server in another country to then access the internet hides your original ip address, gets around geo-location blocks and the traffic is typically not logged by the vpn provider. This is the type of vpn governments don’t like.
I think it’s somewhat naive to assume anything isn’t being spied on by the NSA. They don’t have a history of being picky.
Of course. I’m sure they are making use of plenty of bugs found in firewall software to access and monitor business traffic, but they can subpoena those logs at any time. It’s the private vpn clients where logs aren’t kept that they are most concerned about, hence why I was outlining the difference.
Yeah, I think people are making some pretty naive assumptions about all the new datacenters popping up for AI.
What the fuck do you think the government is asking AI to do for them? Shitty cartoon artwork? Photoshopping vacation photos? Or, maaaaaaybe…I dunno…something like data collection and analysis on every byte of information sent across the tubes of the interwebs?
What are you doing on your work VPN that you care if the government illegally looked at? I work in an industry that legally requires security like a VPN and I don’t care if the government broke the rules. It’s above my paygrade.
Suspect or not, you get the same surveillance treatment as suspected domestic terrorists do.
Yes.
In contrast to not using a VPN, which subjects them to illegal surveillance already?
what in the anti-VPN fearmongering is this bullshit?
They have been surveiling us for years. They just to maximize what they can collect.
They’ve already collected your modal verb!
I’ve been pegged as one who serially modals online.
I connected to my VPN so I can see a video of that and now I’m on 7 government watchlists
Correct, and the FBI inadvertently admitted it publicly by releasing video in the Guthrie abduction case that shouldn’t exist.
Every device with a wireless connection and a GPS, camera, or microphone is surveilling you.
