====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
NSA DOOMSDAY BOMB REVEALED: U.S. SABOTAGED INTERNET SECURITY BEYOND REPAIR OR SALVATION The U.S. Government has consciously and systematically undermined or sabotaged many, most or all of the security and encryption mechanisms and protocols that supposedly protect everything from email to online financial transactions and electronic medical records. This according to a new round of revelations sourced to the Snowden documents and revealed cooperatively by the Guardian, the New York Times and Pro-Publica, which says it is "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest," and which was launched with funding by the Sandler foundation. http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption For some time I'd been wondering what was it that the U.S. and British Governments were so desperate to hide that they were wiling to engage in all their ridiculous and shameful shenanigans around Wikileaks and Snowden. I ALSO wanted to know what they had on the major Internet and technology companies that their cooperation was so readily forthcoming, for example, with Amazon banning a paying customer, Wikileaks, from its servers, without even a government request, never mind order. Well, what was revealed today could well have been it. A multi-year, multi-billion dollar program to systematically undermine or sabotage any and every mechanism to protect online privacy. For how our civilization functions today, this comes as close to duplicating the effort behind the Death Star from the original Star Wars as I can imagine without violating the laws of gravity, thermodynamics and relativity. The back story is that in the mid-1990's, advances in online security and digital cryptography prompted the Clinton administration to propose requiring the so-called "clipper chip" in all networked computer devices so that the Government could have a "back door" into any and every communication they originated or carried. With cypherpunk hackers leading the resistance, the proposal was DOA, and the government appeared to abandon it. But what it really did instead was take it underground. Acting like the "International Communist Conspiracy" of the most rabid cold-war scaremongering fantasies of old, we have just leaned that it infiltrated, subverted, bribed and blackmailed to get "back doors" built into internet and net-connected equipment and have fatal flaws written into protocols, algorithms and standards. As a demonstration of the ever-present gutlessness of mainstream journalism, some factual details were censored from the NY Times and the other reports that came out today in response to government arm-twisting. That means the public will be denied knowledge of what equipment and standards were compromised from the outset or were later broken. Yet it is only a matter of money and time (and mostly money more than time) before the flaws the NSA created or covered up get out into the wild. What could be affected? Well, what abut the entire world financial system and international trade, for starters. Online banking. Amazon, PayPal, your 401K account and everyone else. All academic, medical, financial and business records. THIS IS NOT TRIVIAL. Supposedly private and secure international communications and transactions standards and mechanisms are, in fact, corrupt and therefore untrustworthy. Unless this story (based on the NSA's internal claims about what it has done and can do) are false, ALL pre-2014 internet equipment and security protocols will have to be re-certified or replaced. Should some mafia get a hold of technique that effectively compromises, for example, stock market, commodities or currency exchange markets, the world could be plunged into an economic paralysis that would be a catastrophic disaster for billions (with a "b") of people. Joaquin ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
