Thursday, July 3, 2014

For the NSA, Tor and Trails Linux users are "extremists"

The source code of the XKeystore shows that the U.S. agency seeks to trace and identify all those interested directly or indirectly in "Tor" or "Tails Linux".

If you use the Tor network or Tails secure Linux operating system - or you are simply connected to the websites of these programs - know that there is a good chance the NSA has you now on sight and tagged as an "extremist". 

This is what the German WDR and ARD sites just revealed after they've got their hands on some of the XKeystore source code, the famous NSA search engine .  
 
In a video report, we find lines of code with the obvious goal to "identify potential Tor users". But this is not all, The same type of marking is for visitors of the Tor website. You only have to go to the website without installing the software, and you're stuck with the NSA. Same for Linux Tails. 
Even a simple Google search on this operating system is enough to get you in the databases of the monitoring agency. As for the term "extremist", it is used by the author of the code in a comment field to refer to all those people who have the nerve to use the "anonymizer" software.

  
Source: 01net.com

The code also shows that the marking is done either for users using SSL connections to the "bridges.torproject.org" website or for emails sent to "bridges@torproject.org".  

Note that Xkeyscore can scan the contents of an email, as shown by the command "email_body ('https://bridges ....".

Source: http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html

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