Yes, the FBI & CIA Can Read Your E-mail
by Zack Whittaker on November 13, 2012, from ZDNet Website
Summary:
“Petraeus-gate,” some U.S. pundits are calling it.
How significant is it that even the head of the CIA can have his emails read by an albeit friendly domestic intelligence agency, which can lead to his resignation and global, and very public humiliation?
Here’s how.
The U.S. government – and likely your own government, for that matter – is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary – sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without.
That tin-foil hat really isn’t going to help.
Take it off, you look silly.
Gen. David Petraeus, the former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, resigned over the weekend after he was found to have engaged in an extra-marital affair.
What caught Petraeus out was, of all things, his usage of Google’s online email service, Gmail.
Not that hard for authorities to get to your email (yahoo.com)
This has not only landed the former CIA chief in hot water but has ignited the debate over how, when, and why governments and law enforcement agencies are able to access ordinary citizens’ email accounts, even if they are the head of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world.
If it makes you feel any better, the chances are small that your own or a foreign government will snoop on you.
The odds are much greater – at least for the ordinary person (terrorists, hijackers et al: take note) – that your email account will be broken into by a stranger exploiting your weak password, or an ex-lover with a grudge (see “Fatal Attraction“).
Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data centers.
Intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies can access – thanks to the shift towards Web-based email services in the cloud – but it’s not as exciting or as Jack Bauer-esque as one may think or hope for.
The easiest way to access almost anybody’s email nowadays is still through the courts. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s true.)
The ‘save as draft’ trick
Petraeus set up a private account under a pseudonym and composed email messages but never sent them.
Instead, they were saved in draft.
Petraeus and Broadwell used common e-mail trick (usatoday.com)
His lover, Paula Broadwell, would log in under the same account, read the email and reply, all without sending anything.
The traffic would not be sent across the networks through Google’s data centers, making it nigh on impossible for the National Security Agency or any other electronic signals eavesdropping agency (such as Britain’s elusive GCHQ) to ‘read’ the traffic while it is in transit.
Saving an email as a draft almost entirely eliminates network traffic, making it nigh on impossible for intelligence agencies to ‘traffic sniff.’
And yes, terrorists and pedophiles have been known to use this ‘trick’, but also sophisticated criminals also use this technique.
It eliminates a network trail to a greater or lesser extent and makes it more difficult to trace.
But surely IP addresses are logged and noted?
When emails are sent and received, yes. But the emails were saved in draft and therefore were not sent.
However, Google may still have a record of the IP addresses of those who logged into the account.
However, most Internet or broadband providers offer dynamic IP addresses that change over time, and an IP address does not always point to the same computer, let alone the same region or state every time it is assigned to a user.
Even then, recent U.S. court cases have found that IP addresses do not specifically point to a computer, meaning even if the authorities were sure that it was Petraeus, for instance – though IP addresses very rarely give the exact house number and street address – it would not stick in court.
IP address doesn’t ID individuals in piracy lawsuit, judge rules – CNET
As is often the case, human error can land someone in the legal spotlight. 37-year-old Florida resident Jill Kelley, a family friend to the Petraeus’, allegedly received emails from an anonymous account warning Kelley to stay away from the CIA chief.
But when Broadwell sent these messages, it left behind little fragments of data attached to the email – every email you send has this data attached – which first led the FBI on a path that led up to the very door of Petraeus’ office door in Langley, Virginia.
Get a warrant, serve it to Google?
There’s no such thing as a truly ‘anonymous’ email account, and no matter how much you try to encrypt the contents of the email you are sending, little fragments of data are attached by email servers and messaging companies.
It’s how email works and it’s entirely unavoidable.
Every email sent and received comes with ‘communications data,’ otherwise known as “metadata” – little fragments of information that carries the recipient and the sender’s address, and routing data such as the IP addresses of the sender and the servers or data center that it’s passed through.
UK’s Web monitoring draft bill revealed: What you need to know | ZDNET
Extracting this metadata is not a mystery or difficult, in fact anyone can do it, but if you have the legal tools and law enforcement power to determine where the email was passed through – such as an IP address of one of Google’s data centers in the United States.
Email is surprisingly similar to the postal system, especially when it comes to the communication “metadata.”
The system is remarkably similar to the postal system.
You can seal the envelope and hide what’s inside, but it contains a postmark of where it came from and where it’s going.
It may even have your fingerprints on it. All of this information outside the contents is “metadata.”
That said, even if you use a disposable Gmail account – such as iamananonymousemailsender @ gmail dot com, for instance – it’s clearly a Gmail account, and Gmail is operated by Google.
Sometimes it just takes a smidgen of common knowledge.
Ultimately, only Google had access to the emails. Because it’s a private company, it does not fall under the scope of the Fourth Amendment.
Microsoft serves subpoenas on Google to disrupt criminal botnet | ZDNET
If the U.S. government or one of its law enforcement agencies wanted to access the private Petraeus email account, it would have to serve up a warrant.
In this case, however, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would not apply.
Even the Patriot Act would not necessarily apply in this case, even though it does allow the FBI and other authorized agencies to search email.
However, in this case, above all else, the Stored Communications Act (SCA) does apply – part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
The act allows for any electronic data to be read if it has been stored for less than 180 days.
In this case, the law was specifically designed – albeit quite some time before email became a mainstream communications medium – to allow server- or computer-stored data to be accessed by law enforcement.
However, a court order must be issued before the 180 day limit, and in this case it was.
Reporting from London, the BBC News’ Mark Ward summed it up in a single sentence:
Once it knew Ms. Broadwell was the sender of the threatening messages, the FBI got a warrant that gave it covert access to the anonymous email account.
Email trail helped FBI crack Petraeus case – BBC News
And that’s how they do it.
No matter which way you look at it, no matter how much the government or its law enforcement agencies want the data or the proof of wrongdoing, they must almost always get a court order.
And Petraeus is no different from any other U.S. citizen, U.K. citizen, or European citizen – and further afield for that matter.
What it always boils down to is a court order, and it’s as simple as that. It’s not ECHELON or an episode of “24” using hacking or cracking techniques; it’s an afternoon in a fusty courtroom with a semi-switched on (and preferably sober) judge.
That said, it doesn’t grant unfettered or unrestricted access to a user’s inbox or email account, but when an alleged crime has been committed or law enforcement starts digging around, it allows a fairly wide berth of powers to request access to electronically stored data.
Former assistant secretary to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Stewart Baker told the Associated Press:
The government can’t just wander through your emails just because they’d like to know what you’re thinking or doing.
But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people’s emails.
So there it is.
A court order is all you need to access a person’s inbox, but sufficient evidence is often required in order to do this – particularly through the Stored Communications Act, or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
It sounds obvious, of course, that’s because it is.
That said, if there is reasonable suspicion albeit lacking evidence, or a U.S. law enforcement agency is dealing with a foreign national outside of the United States, that normally requires a secret FISA court order to be granted in order to proceed with the interception of data or warranted access to an email account, for example.
Outside the U.S. – Is it still ‘just’ a court order?
A simple court order is all it takes, and it can apply to anyone in public office or the man on the street holding a sign warning that “the end is nigh.”
But it’s OK; you’re in:
- Europe
- Australia
- Asia
The U.S. can’t use their laws against you in a foreign country because, well, you’re outside of its jurisdiction.
Again, sorry to burst your privacy bubble but that excuse didn’t wash with the European Parliament, it shouldn’t with you either.
European Commission ‘in denial’ over Patriot Act loophole | ZDNET
If you’re a European citizen with a Microsoft, Google, Yahoo or Apple account – or any email offered in the cloud by a U.S. company – which is most consumer email services nowadays – it is accessible to the U.S. courts and other nations through various acts of law, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or the PATRIOT Act, in which the latter amended much of what the former had implemented in the first place.
Microsoft admits Patriot Act can access EU-based cloud data | ZDNET
(“Oh great, he’s talking about the Patriot Act again,” says everybody.)
Search on: patriot act | ZDNET
It’s worth noting a common few misconceptions. Since first reporting this some years ago (and subsequently sparking a trans-Atlantic diplomatic row, whoops) analysts and experts alike, some who are under the thumb of the cloud companies themselves, claim that the Patriot Act – to use the umbrella, common term – does not allow the U.S. government or its law enforcement agencies the powers that others (*cough* including me) claim.
EU demands answers over Microsoft’s Patriot Act admission | ZDNET
Let’s just run through a few examples of false claims on top of false claims:
It doesn’t give “unrestricted” or “unprecedented” access to date outside the U.S., because for the most part these warrants must go through a special FISA court.
The trouble is even though there is some level of accountability via the FISA courts, these sessions are held in secret and there are no public minutes or record to go from, so swings and roundabouts.
Only in exceptional cases where warrants are not issued is when there is an immediate threat to life. But because these courts are secret, there’s no definitive and ultimate way to know for an absolute fact that the U.S. authorities don’t just bypass the FISA courts and skip ahead with their investigations anyway.
(You only really have my word – and my sources in the U.S. government, such as legal counsels and spokespeople, to go on.)
Pretty much every country around the world has ‘Patriot Act’-like legislation.
It’s just where to look for it.
On the third point, other countries do have similar laws and this should be noted. (I personally thought it was relatively common knowledge, forgive my naivety.)
The U.K., for instance, has the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act that can be used to acquire data from a third-country via a U.K.-based firm, just as the Patriot Act can be used on a U.S. firm to access data in a third-country via a local subsidiary.
How the UK plans anti-terror phone, email monitoring | ZDNET
But in terms of where the major email and cloud providers are based – the United States, notably on the West Coast – it means that U.S. law must apply, in spite of foreign laws that attempt to or successfully counteract the provisions offered in U.S. law.
Not many major cloud providers operate solely in the U.K., whereas:
- Microsoft
- Apple
and Amazon are all U.S. headquartered with a subsidiary in the U.K. and other countries.
The lesson here?
We’re all as bad as each other and no legally or financially reasonable place is safe to store data if you’re a massive criminal or looking to stash a bunch of secret or uncouth documents away from the authorities.
As for Petraeus, he may have been careful but in spite of his counter-terrorism knowledge and clever tricks in going under the radar, ultimately there was a weak link in the security chain – and no matter how far you go to try and cover your tracks, often it always falls down to two things: human error, or sex.
Info emerges about 2nd woman in Petraeus case | The Seattle Times
Five Ways to Avoid Pulling a “Petraeus” – Security for Your Email
by Seth Rosenblatt on November 15, 2012, from CNET Website
When it comes to keeping your e-mail private, it’s not hard to be smarter than the former director of the CIA.
Here are five easy tips for avoiding David Petraeus’ missteps.
The ‘extramarital affair’ scandal engulfing former CIA director David Petraeus have brought massive public attention to the convoluted U.S. laws governing e-mail privacy.
We’ve got some quick tips for keeping your electronic communiqués private.
Before getting into the more technical side of things, there are some simple behavioral changes you can make:
Always log out of your e-mail when you’re done using it.
This goes for any online service, including social networking sites.
Logging out prevents a cached password from keeping you signed in even after the browser has been restarted.
Never use your preferred personal e-mail account for highly sensitive communication.
Set up new e-mail account that’s not connected to you in any way and is only used for communicating with that one person.
It’s a good idea to keep sensitive information out of your subject line, too.
Change your location so that your IP address changes.
Pick up your butt and head across town to a restaurant or cafe with Wi-Fi that’s not in your usual haunts list, some place that’s not near your:
- home
- office
- hotel
Access your alternative e-mail account only from a one of these alternative locations, and do not under any circumstances log on to any of your “regular” accounts from that alternative location.
Those easily could be used to track your movements and connect you “secret” account to your main ones.
Masking your IP address sounds technical, but it can be as simple as installing a program.
E-mail is less like a sealed letter, and more like a postcard – with the proper know-how, it’s not all that hard to flip it over and read it.
The most direct way to do it is to use a reputable service like TOR (download for Windows | Mac) or HotSpot Shield (download for Windows | Mac).
Using PGP encryption remains the most effective way to make the inherently insecure e-mail a safer way to communicate.
PGP is not particularly easy, however, and works best with a desktop e-mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird – both of which are falling out of use as webmail continues to dominate.
There is no major webmail service that supports PGP encryption, although there are services like CounterMail (which I haven’t used yet) that do.
CounterMail – protecting your privacy – encrypted pgp email webmail
The best way to avoid the pitfalls of Petraeus is to simply think about what you’re doing, of course, and maybe to knock off cheating on your spouse if you’re in a high-level government position dealing with national security concerns.
The Petraeus scandal: Where are they now? (yahoo.com)
Researchers Send “Wireless” Message Using Elusive Particles
March 14, 2012, from UniversityOfRochester Website
A group of scientists led by researchers from the University of Rochester and North Carolina State University have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos – nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light.
The message was sent through 240 meters of stone and said simply, “Neutrino.”
“Using neutrinos, it would be possible to communicate between any two points on Earth without using satellites or cables,”
said Dan Stancil, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research.
“Neutrino communication systems would be much more complicated than today’s systems, but may have important strategic uses.”
Many have theorized about the possible uses of neutrinos in communication because of one particularly valuable property: they can penetrate almost anything they encounter.
If this technology could be applied to submarines, for instance, then they could conceivably communicate over long distances through water, which is difficult, if not impossible, with present technology.
And if we wanted to communicate with something in outer space that was on the far side of a moon or a planet, our message could travel straight through without impediment.
“Of course, our current technology takes massive amounts of high-tech equipment to communicate a message using neutrinos, so this isn’t practical now,”
said Kevin McFarland, a University of Rochester physics professor who was involved in the experiment.
“But the first step toward someday using neutrinos for communication in a practical application is a demonstration using today’s technology.”
The team of scientists that demonstrated that it was possible performed their test at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab (or Fermilab, for short), outside of Chicago.
The group has submitted its findings (Demonstration of Communication Using Neutrinos) to the journal Modern Physics Letters A.
At Fermilab the researchers had access to two crucial components.
The first is one of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators, which creates high-intensity beams of neutrinos by accelerating protons around a 2.5-mile-circumference track and then colliding them with a carbon target.
The second is a multi-ton detector called MINERvA, located in a cavern 100 meters underground.
The fact that such a substantial setup is necessary to communicate using neutrinos means that much work will need to be done before the technology can be incorporated into a readily usable form.
The communication test was done during a two-hour period when the accelerator was running at half its full intensity due to an upcoming scheduled downtime.
Regular MINERvA interaction data was collected at the same time the communication test was being carried out.
Today, most communication is carried out by sending and receiving electromagnetic waves.
That is how our:
- radios
- cell phones
- televisions
operate.
But electromagnetic waves don’t pass easily through most types of matter.
They get blocked by water and mountains and many other liquids and solids.
Neutrinos, on the other hand, regularly pass through entire planets without being disturbed.
Because of their neutral electric charge and almost non-existent mass, neutrinos are not subject to magnetic attractions and are not significantly altered by gravity, so they are virtually free of impediments to their motion.
The message that the scientists sent using neutrinos was translated into binary code.
In other words, the word “neutrino” was represented by a series of 1’s and 0’s, with the 1’s corresponding to a group of neutrinos being fired and the 0’s corresponding to no neutrinos being fired.
The neutrinos were fired in large groups because they are so evasive that even with a multi-ton detector, only about one in ten billion neutrinos are detected.
After the neutrinos were detected, a computer on the other end translated the binary code back into English, and the word “neutrino” was successfully received.
“Neutrinos have been an amazing tool to help us learn about the workings of both the nucleus and the universe,”
said Deborah Harris, Minerva project manager,
“But neutrino communication has a long way to go before it will be as effective.”
Minerva is an international collaboration of nuclear and particle physicists from 21 institutions that study neutrino behavior using a detector located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago.
This is the first neutrino experiment in the world to use a high-intensity beam to study neutrino reactions with nuclei of five different target materials, creating the first side-by-side comparison of interactions.
This will help complete the picture of neutrinos and allow data to be more clearly interpreted in current and future experiments.
Wireless Neutrino Network Could Pass Through the Center of the Earth
by Sebastian Anthony on March 15, 2012, from ExtremeTech Website
Scientists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago have successfully communicated a short digital message using a stream of neutrinos.
While this sounds cool, the truly exceptional bit is that the message was transmitted through 790 feet (240m) of solid stone.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles (like electrons or quarks, or the theorized Higgs Boson) that have almost zero mass, a neutral charge (thus their name), and travel at close to the speed of light.
Unlike almost every other particle in the universe, neutrinos are unaffected by electromagnetism (because of their neutral charge), and only subject to gravity and weak nuclear force.
This means that neutrinos can easily pass through solid objects as large as planets.
Every second, 65 billion neutrinos from the Sun pass through each square centimeter of the Earth at almost the speed of light.
To recreate this effect, the Fermilab scientists used a particle accelerator (NuMI) to shoot a stream of neutrinos through 240 meters of stone at the MINERvA neutrino detector.
If MINERvA detected neutrinos, it registered as a binary 1; no neutrinos, binary 0.
Using this technique (pictured above), the scientists, with a burst of originality to rival Alexander Graham Bell himself, transmitted the word “neutrino.”
Now, there’s nothing to stop Fermilab from pointing their particle gun at the ground and shooting neutrinos all the way through the Earth to Chicago’s antipode near Australia.
This would instantly become the fastest communication network on the planet:
Instead of traveling 10,000 miles or more via cable, it’s only 8,000 miles in a direct line through the center of the Earth.
Satellite networks, which are still regularly used for telecoms, have to bounce through 50,000 miles or more. In theory, anyway.
The same properties that allow neutrinos to pass through whole planets also make them very hard to detect.
MINERvA is a large, multi-ton slab of metal (pictured above), and yet it can only detect one neutrino in 10 billion.
Producing all of those neutrinos requires a huge amount of energy and a particle accelerator, which is usually a few miles in length (CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is 17 miles in circumference and 100 meters underground).
Suffice it to say, then, that mere mortals won’t be building neutrino networks any time soon, but there are definitely military and government applications.
Similar to quantum networks, it would be very hard to wiretap a neutrino burst. Likewise, neutrinos could also be used to communicate with submarines, which have very limited communication channels (radio waves really don’t like water).
Then there’s the interstellar internet – or Galnet, as I like to call it – where you really don’t want a wireless signal to hit an obstacle (a star, planet, spaceship…) half way there.
24.0 – Interstellar Communication Techniques (bibliotecapleyades.net)
More information at “Demonstration of Communication Using Neutrinos”.
What is a Quantum Computer
by T.C. on May 16, 2013, from TheEconomist Website
QUANTUM mechanics and computers traditionally don’t mix.
The strange fuzziness of the quantum world is a big obstacle for chip designers, who work with components so small that quantum effects make the electrons flowing through them unruly and unpredictable.
But it is possible to design a computer in which that quantum fuzziness is a feature, not a bug.
Researchers have been working on so-called quantum computers since the early 1980s, when the idea was first proposed.
Recently, a Canadian firm called D-Wave has been in the news, for its device – a special kind of quantum computer designed to solve one particular problem – has, for the first time, been raced against a classical, non-quantum computer to see which is faster.
D-Wave Systems | The Practical Quantum Computing Company (dwavesys.com)
D-Wave’s machine is designed to solve only a specific kind of problem, but scientists around the world are working on general-purpose quantum machines that could attack any kind of problem that a standard computer could tackle.
But what exactly is a quantum computer?
Classical computers – like the one on which you are reading this article – work by performing a series of simple tasks (such as adding two numbers) extremely quickly.
But the circuits in a classical computer abide by the rather boring laws of classical physics, which stipulate that they can only be in a single state at a given time.
Quantum computers use the racier laws governing quantum mechanics to skirt around that limitation.
The fundamental unit of quantum computation is the “qubit“, the quantum analogue of the ordinary “bit” in a standard machine.
Like ordinary bits, qubits can take the value of 1 or 0. Unlike ordinary bits, their quantum nature also lets them exist in a strange mixture – a “superposition”, in the jargon – of both states at once, much like Erwin Schrödinger‘s famous cat.
Thought Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
That means that a quantum computer can be in many states simultaneously, which in turn means that it can, in some sense, perform many different calculations at the same time.
To be precise, a quantum computer with four qubits could be in 24 (i.e., 16) different states at a time.
As you add qubits, the number of possible states rises exponentially.
A 16-bit quantum machine can be in 216, or 65,536, states at once, while a 128-qubit device could occupy 3.4 x 1038 different configurations, a colossal number which, if written out in longhand, would have 39 digits.
Having been put into a delicate quantum state, a quantum computer can thus examine billions of possible answers simultaneously. (One way of thinking about this is that the machine has co-operated with versions of itself in parallel universes.)
With great power, alas, come irritating limitations.
The answers that a quantum machine gives to questions are probabilistic.
In other words, they might be wrong and must be checked.
If a given solution is wrong, the calculation must be repeated until the correct answer emerges, a flaw that removes the speed advantage quantum computers offer over classical devices.
Clever programming can exploit another quantum phenomenon called interference to significantly improve the odds of getting a correct result, restoring some of the speed-up.
But boffins have figured out how to do that only for a small number of problems, which limits the probable utility of quantum computing.
Most famously, by running something called Shor’s algorithm, a quantum computer could rapidly find the prime factors of very large numbers, a computational feat whose difficulty for ordinary computers forms the basis of many of the cryptographic systems used on the Internet.
Quantum Computing (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
That would certainly be useful.
But for many tasks, ordinary computers will probably be just as fast as their quantum counterparts.
The NSA is Working on Powerful Quantum Computing Technology
by David Holmes on June 13, 2013, from PandoDaily Website
As the NSA snoopapalooza continues into its second week, much has been made of its vaunted Utah Data Center, a billion-dollar facility spanning 1.5 million square feet that can process data on the order of zettabytes, or 1021 bytes. (That’s 10 to the 21st power. If you know how exponents work, that’s a hell of a lot of bytes).
While storing data can be burdensome enough – one estimate says the NSA will pay $40 million a year on electricity bills alone – analyzing it and figuring out what’s relevant is even harder.
Utah Springs Surprise Tax on Massive NSA Data Center | WIRED
As “The Wire” creator David Simon wrote in a thought-provoking though overly simplified piece on NSA snooping,
“When the government asks for something, it is notable to wonder what they are seeking and for what purpose.
When they ask for everything, it is not for specific snooping or violations of civil rights.”
There’s just too much data to do anything useful with, he says.
Obviously, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the scope and capabilities of the NSA’s surveillance program (they don’t call them “secret agents” for nothing).
But generally speaking, it is true that after a certain point, the more data you collect, the more additional data you need to gather meaningful insights from it.
But that’s if you use boring classical computers.
What about quantum computers?
Unlike classical computers, which rely on bits of information that are either 0 or 1 (or on/off), quantum computers rely on qubits which exist in a quantum state, allowing them to be 0, 1, or any number of infinite superpositions in between.
This allows computations to be processed in parallel, and scientists say it’s theoretically possible to build quantum computers that are a million times faster than their classical counterparts.
Alas, we’re still in the research stage of the quantum computing revolution, and quantum devices have a long way to go before they could consistently outperform most commercial laptops.
But that hasn’t stopped organizations like Google, IBM, and, yes, the NSA, from investing in the technology.
And what might it do with this technology?
Read what Google has to say about the potential of quantum computing:
Assume I hide a ball in a cabinet with a million drawers.
How many drawers do you have to open to find the ball? Sometimes you may get lucky and find the ball in the first few drawers but at other times you have to inspect almost all of them.
So on average it will take you 500,000 peeks to find the ball.
Now a quantum computer can perform such a search looking only into 1000 drawers.
Sounds like a great way to find balls in drawers.
It also sounds ideal for identifying individuals amidst a vast amount of data.
If NSA surveillance is like finding a needle in a haystack, then quantum computing could be thought of as a giant magnet.
Besides surveillance the NSA has another good reason to invest in quantum computing: cryptography.
One of the more promising applications is its potential to crack some of the toughest encryptions known to man, the kind of stuff used to protect state secrets and financial transactions.
If a key is developed by other nations, the NSA needs to be prepared to safeguard our own data.
But the NSA could also go on the offensive, both against foreign nations and potentially against its own citizens for the purpose of surveillance.
Today, we’re worried about the NSA accessing our phone records and Facebook status updates.
What happens when they can access our bank statements or medical records?
True, they can already access this information with a subpoena or court order.
But when an individual’s encrypted information can be mined, located, and then cross-referenced with a thousand data points – from what porn, er…, websites you visit to what books you have on your Kindle to who you call and text, and all at the speed of a million MacBook Pros – there’s enormous potential for abuse.
But how worried should we be?
According to MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science Scott Aaronson, we can breathe easy, at least for now:
“(Quantum) cryptography is a long way from practicality, despite anything you may have read otherwise.
The only way that could not be the case is if the NSA had some gigantic crash program that was decades ahead of everyone else.
I’ve talked to people at NSA and that seems very unlikely.”
So which is it:
Are we on the cusp of a brave new world of computing and security like some media outlets breathlessly suggest?
Or is it merely Day One of the quantum computing revolution?
Aaronson compares it to the first computing revolution.
“There were a hundred years between (computing pioneer) Charles Babbage and the invention of the transistor (in 1947).
And we don’t yet have the quantum computing analog of the transistor.”
And yet, when Congress passed the Patriot Act in 2001, few would have predicted that 12 years later over half of American adults would carry tiny computers in their pockets capable of collecting a staggering amount of data.
Smartphone Ownership 2013 | Pew Research Center
We may be 10 years, 50 years, or 100 years from the age of the quantum computer, but when that happens, we need to prepare ourselves, both with new legal protections and encryption techniques.
Because a world where organizations can collect any piece of recorded data on an individual instantaneously may be just around the corner.
MORE:
5G and ‘Internet of Things’ to Create Unprecedented Surveillance (bibliotecapleyades.net)
5G and IoT – Total Technological Control Grid being Rolled Out Fast (bibliotecapleyades.net)
10 Ways Hackers Have Punked Corporations and Oppressive Governments (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Anonymous Hits the New York Stock Exchange, World Bank, FED, and Vatican – Total Media Blackout (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Anti-NSA “Blackphone” – Encrypted Smartphone Designed to Liberate Users from Total Surveillance (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Anti-Piracy Efforts are Unlikely to Beat Sci-Hub (bibliotecapleyades.net)
A Whole New Version of The Internet is About to Be Switched On (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Beyond IoT and 5G – Internet of Bodies or IoB (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Bitcoin – The New World Order’s Plot for A World Currency? (bibliotecapleyades.net)
‘Bond Villain’ Schwab and his WEF are Pushing the Internet of Bodies (bibliotecapleyades.net)
‘Challenging The Dollar’ – Bitcoin Total Value Tops $1 Billion (bibliotecapleyades.net)
CIA Home Invasion: Smart TVs & the ‘Internet of Things’ – Library of Rickandria
Computer Scientists achieve ‘Crown Jewel’ of Cryptography (bibliotecapleyades.net)
DARPA launches ‘Project CHARIOT’ in Bid to shield Big Tech Profits (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Documents Reveal NSA Reads Your Internet Chats – Here’s How to Avoid Being Spied On (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Domestic “Internet of Things” Begins to Merge With the Industrial Smart Grid (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Elon Musk Unveils New Plan for Global Satellite Internet – While Google Invests a Billion in SpaceX (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Evade Government Surveillance Stay Anonymous Online (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Fighting Back Against the “Intellectual Property” Racket (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Giant 5G Drones in Hawaii Skies? – Pushback is Growing… (bibliotecapleyades.net)
How to Hide Your Digital Communications from Big Brother (bibliotecapleyades.net)
How to Succeed at Becoming a Digital Nomad (bibliotecapleyades.net)
How to Unblock Websites for Free and Why it Feels Good (bibliotecapleyades.net)
How will We Live in the Year 2065? – Cities, Cyborgs and Social Science (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Human Microchip Implants and the Internet of Bodies (bibliotecapleyades.net)
IBM Gets Closer to Real Quantum Computing (bibliotecapleyades.net)
International Internet Standards-Setting Body Pulls Away from U.S. Control, Citing Surveillance Concerns (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Internet Freedom – Get Free Access to Anonymous VPNs Via University Project (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Internet Launches Fightback Against State Snoopers (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Kim Dotcom Wants to Encrypt Half of The Internet to End Government Surveillance (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Lavabit and Silent Circle Join Forces to Make all Email Surveillance-Proof (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Manufactured Dystopia – Globalists Won’t Stop Hacking Humans (bibliotecapleyades.net)
New Tech Startup Predicts the Future by Decoding the Past (bibliotecapleyades.net)
New VPN Technology Claims to Thwart Great Firewall of China (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Now Everyone Wants to Sell You a Magical Anonymity Router – Choose Wisely (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Outernet Joins the Space Race for Internet Accessibility (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Outernet – The Information War on a Whole New Level (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Quantum Teleportation Breakthrough May Pave The Way for Quantum Computing (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Remembering ‘Who We Truly Are’ in the Face of the Digital Revolution (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Scientists Create a 5-atom Quantum Computer that Could Make today’s Encryption Obsolete (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Scientists Store on DNA an Operating System, a Movie and a Computer Virus (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Now Everyone Wants to Sell You a Magical Anonymity Router – Choose Wisely (bibliotecapleyades.net)
The Internet of Everything: Annihilating Time & Space – Library of Rickandria
The Outernet (bibliotecapleyades.net)
The Technologies Building the Smart Cities of the Future (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Turkey’s Twitter Ban Collapse Fueled by VPNs and DNS Tricks (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Turning The Tables on Big Brother – Now Internet Users Can Watch Who Is Spying on Them in Blow Against Google’s New Snooping Policy (bibliotecapleyades.net)
UN Predicts ‘Internet of Things’ (bibliotecapleyades.net)
U.S. Government Developing Ultimate Cyber Weapon – Prime-Factoring Quantum Computing Makes Encryption Obsolete (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Welcome to The Quantum Internet (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Who Tracks the Trackers that Track You Online? – You Can, with ‘Lightbeam’ (bibliotecapleyades.net)
Wi-Fi and USB Drive = Your Own Mini-Internet (Freedom) – Library of Rickandria
World’s First Anti-Propaganda Search Engine Launching Soon that Favors Independent Media while Banning Government and Corporate Disinfo (bibliotecapleyades.net)