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- -------- Original Message --------
Subject:        GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give 
us a way to fight back
Date:   Wed, 20 Aug 2014 18:02:21 -0400
From:   Free Software Foundation <i...@fsf.org>
Reply-To:       Free Software Foundation <i...@fsf.org>
To:     david cooper <da...@gbenet.com>



Dear david,



GNU community members and collaborators have discovered threatening details 
about a
five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA. The good news? 
Those same
hackers have already worked out a free software countermeasure to thwart the 
program.



According to Heise newspaper
<http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/NSA-GCHQ-The-HACIENDA-Program-for-Internet-Colonization-2292681.html>,
the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, 
Australia, and New
Zealand, have used HACIENDA to map every server in twenty-seven countries, 
employing a
technique known as port scanning. The agencies have shared this map and use it 
to plan
intrusions into the servers. Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks 
civilian
computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing 
resources and cover
its tracks.



But this was not enough to stop the team of GNU hackers and their 
collaborators. After
making key discoveries about the details of HACIENDA, Julian Kirsch, Christian 
Grothoff,
Jacob Appelbaum, and Holger Kenn designed the TCP Stealth
<https://gnunet.org/kirsch2014knock> system to protect unadvertised servers 
from port
scanning. They revealed their work at the recent annual GNU Hackers' Meeting
<https://www.gnu.org/ghm/> in Germany.



You can view a video announcing the discovery on fsf.org. Please be sure to 
share this with
everyone you know who cares about bulk surveillance.
<https://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-government-surveillance-and-give-us-a-way-to-fight-back?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>



We must fight the political battle for an end to mass surveillance and reduce 
the amount of
data collected about people in the first place
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy>. On an individual 
level we have
to do everything we can to thwart the surveillance programs that are already in 
place.



*No matter your skill level, you can get involved at the FSF's surveillance page
<https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/surveillance/?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>.*



Ethical developers inside and outside GNU have been working for years on free 
software that
does not keep secrets from users, and programs that anyone can review to remove 
potential
vulnerabilities. These capabilities give free software users a fighting chance 
against
surveillance. Now, our community is turning its attention to uncovering and 
undermining
insidious programs like HACIENDA. Free software and its ideals are crucial to 
putting an end
to government bulk surveillance.



*Share this news with your friends, to help make people aware of the importance 
of free
software in fighting bulk surveillance.*



/Jacob Appelbaum of the TCP Stealth team gave a remote keynote address at the 
FSF's
LibrePlanet conference this year. Watch the recording of "Free Software for 
freedom:
Surveillance and you."
<http://media.libreplanet.org/u/zakkai/m/free-software-for-freedom-surveillance-and-you/>/





Libby Reinish and Zak Rogoff
Campaigns Managers



/You can view this post online
<https://fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-hackers-discover-hacienda-government-surveillance-and-give-us-a-way-to-fight-back?pk_campaign=hacienda&pk_kwd=email>./

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via RSS
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<https://www.fsf.org/jf>

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