NSA jacked itself directly into Google and Yahoo data centres NSA jacked itself directly into Google and Yahoo data centres Photo: EPA Download audio file Going online to search for answers, places and people has become such an integral part of our life that we even use a special word for it - Google. However, with the latest revelations made by Edward Snowden, the name of the tech giant is now associated with the spying scandal. Even though the Google officials denied giving the government access to the users’ data, it turned out that nobody needed this permission much. The NSA has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Google and Yahoo data centers around the world. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts. You may say there is nothing new here. For months we’ve been getting evidence of the US secret services disregarding our privacy online. Jim Killock, an executive director of Open Rights Group, an Internet privacy organization in London, explains how gathering overseas data allows the NSA to avoid restrictions they would have normally faced even in the US. Its also important to note that this is the same data that theyve got access to via PRISM, so taking a full copy of what is on essentially Google and Yahoo servers through surreptitious means is circumventing the procedures that they presumably have in place over PRISM access. But this seems to be a way of getting much more broad information rather than targeted searches or warranted accesses. Let’s take a look at how it works. Your Internet service provider sees, and may record, basically all your activity. For example, with Google Search it is your search queries, results that appeared in searches and pages you visit that are collected. Regarding web-browsers in general, it is the pages you visit and when, user data and possibly user login details with auto-fill features, your IP address, internet service provider, device hardware details, operating system and browser version, cookies and cached data from websites. So even though tech companies are trying to address weaknesses in their system like Google who announced last month that they will now encrypt their internal network to avoid possible wiretapping, there seems to be little limit to what secret agencies are ready to do to get the info out of them. Nevertheless, there is something users can do about it, Andrey Komarov, head of international projects for IB group (digital forensics company), says. “The best recommendation is to use the encryption of your messenger services including instant messengers. There are lots of free ware and absolutely open sources tools which can help you to encrypt all your data and transfer it in a more secure way. I can’t say that it’s absolutely secure, there are a lot of ways how to decrypt it or to intercept your keys, but anyway it can help you to protect your privacy. The second recommendation is not to transfer the data which is sensitive in plain text. Of course, it’s always better to decrypt it to transfer it not by electronic signals and Internet”. While it remains unclear whether the secret agencies had help collecting users’ data from inside the technology giants, Google had lodged complaints with the NSA, the White House and members of Congress. Evidently even the mighty of the world don’t like the idea of their corporate networks being private no more.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 11:47:03 +0000
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