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Will it work? German email companies adopt new encryption to foil NSA

RT | August 9, 2013

Communications sent between Germany’s two leading email providers will now be encrypted to provide better security against potential NSA surveillance. Experts say the move will do little to thwart well-equipped snoopers.

The “E-mail made in Germany” project has been set up in the wake of US surveillance revelations made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. National Security Agency documents show that the agency intercepts 500 million phone calls, texts, and emails in Germany each month.

“Germans are deeply unsettled by the latest reports on the potential interception of communication data,” said Rene Obermann, head of Deutsche Telekom, the country’s largest email provider. “Now, they can bank on the fact that their personal data online is as secure as it possibly can be.”

Deutsche Telekom and United Internet, which operate about two-thirds of Germany’s primary email accounts, said that from now on they will use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – a modern, industry-standard form of encryption that scrambles signals as they are sent through cables, which is the point at which the NSA often intercepts communication. The companies will also employ exclusively German servers and internal cables when sending messages between each other.

Obermann told the media that no access to users’ email will now be possible without a warrant. However, experts claim the impact of the measure is likely to be mostly psychological and symbolic.

“This initiative helps to tackle the-day-to-day sniffing around on the communication lines but it still doesn’t prevent governments from getting information,” Stefan Frei, a research director at information security company NSS Labs, told Reuters.

As Snowden’s files revealed, the NSA specifically focuses on foreign servers – often with backing from the country that hosts them – when intercepting communication. The agency is also able to crack the SSL code, with and without help from the email operator. However, it is much harder to do so without an operator-issued “key.”

It is notable that Google and other leading companies implicated as willing participants in the PRISM surveillance program also offer SSL encoding with their email service.

“Of course the NSA could still break in if they wanted to, but the mass encryption of emails would make it harder and more expensive for them to do so,” said Sandro Gaycken, a professor of cyber security at Berlin’s Free University.

August 10, 2013 - Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments »

  1. I think many people are missing-out that though the excuse for total surveillance is catching foreign spies, terrorists and pedofiles, the real business of capturing total information is to provide for a global one-stop-shop for the profitable allocation of privilege, business interests and exploitative opportunity.

    Ubiquitous spying under the aegis of the G8 nations is intended to produce advantage and conveyable opportunity for dues paying globalized corporations vis-a-vis local, regional and national business interests. When you buy your business’ spying services from an NSA franchise, you get their support for your globalized business and you get privileged access to total intelligence and total situational awareness versus the interests of non-aligned corporations.

    This relationship between the authority to spy and the beneficial interests of spying becomes increasingly important in an economy where economic growth is capped pending its reversal. And, for the corporados, this is the first big road sign announcing that BAU is no longer sustainable nor tolerable and the overt supremacy of spying communicates clearly to all that in the near future the privilege and presumption of exploitative excess will become of necessity rationed.

    The top corporados know that the exposés of ubiquitous spying signal the beginning of a sea change terminating general support for unconstrained expansionism. It remains to be seen whether our citizen, democratic and progressive forces in society will see and understand this signal for the capitulation of the growth oriented BAU and the rise of a replacement regimen for transacting the licensing of growth and the re-allocation of corporate privilege.

    We know that BAU needs to go, but do we want a localized world mosaic of horizontally integrated sovereign sustainable citizen economies or do we want a globalized world operated pursuant to a centrally planned imperial allocation of resource and environmental exploitation where expansion opportunity is rationed by and for the richest of the rich?

    In the imperial model, all business, economic privileges and opportunities will be allocated competitively and centrally, and this will become the defining function of our new global regime. As enviros, will we be happy that growth of exploitation is nearing its end, or will we be distraught that an absolute and all-seeing imperious power is necessary to contain and ration our economic footprint.

    Will we accept that the banner of our civilization’s sea change will be a PR initiative ostensibly targeting climate change rather than our civilization’s willing, holistic and principled acceptance of informed precaution and environmentalism as the context, pre-condition and necessity for the survival of humanity.

    The real power of the Snowden et al revelations is that they make it clear that both the NSA and the linked intelligence agencies and presidents and prime ministers of the G8 nations work only for the same over-arching authority, and in no case is that authority the citizens, congresses, senates or parliaments of their respective nations.

    Never before has the emperor’s new clothes been so unambiguously exposed and paraded. What remains to be seen is whether we will go back to our conventional roles as pretend citizens of subject democracies or will we take our democracy away from the wizards orchestrating our political animation.

    May we live a while longer in even more interesting times.

    Michael\\

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    Michael\\'s avatar Comment by Michael\\ | August 10, 2013 | Reply

    • I continue to be amazed that nobody is writing about the fact that the present surveillance paradigm is totally incompatible with the existence of a market economy much less democratic government.

      Have people never considered industrial espionage or political blackmail?

      Like

      aletho's avatar Comment by aletho | August 10, 2013 | Reply

      • Precisely, and we know that there has long been a revolving door between “industrial – commercial” espionage and “national state security” espionage such that many contractors are now double breasted if not double agents and sell the products achieved in one in the market of the other. And, of course without this cash market for adding business value to suveillance, Mossad, MI-6, Booz-Allen and Stratfor would be punters instead of billion dollar players, henchflak and kingmakers. But what they can create with intelligence, they can also depose with stealth. The open declaration from Snowden etc that all business and personal “secrets” are now up for sale; and without any residual capacity or willingness in national governments to defend “privacy” against wholesale intrusion, the whole planet becomes a financialized vertical hierarchy based on proximity to secrets and the willingness of NSA franchises to protect the privacy and interests of their most favourable clients. Possibly why senators on intelligence review committees get so rich with defense contractor favours, election funding and remunerative board appointments. M\\

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        Michael\\'s avatar Comment by Michael\\ | August 10, 2013 | Reply


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