NSA Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

Encryption may no longer be enough to keep your internet trail private. Thanks to the supercomputers (along with some other more coercive methods) at the NSA’s disposal, the Agency has been increasingly able to go through or around encrypted data, with the superfast, custom-built computers abilities to break codes and access the contents. The NSA has also reportedly collaborated (or in some cases, forced with a court order) with technology companies in the US to build “entry points” into their products, which allow them to access the data much more easily.

Thanks to the leaks revealed by Edward Snowden, there are now documents showing how far the NSA is going to ensure that it has access to encrypted data. The data collected still cannot be legally accessed and read without a warrant, however, NSA rules permit that the agency is allowed to store encrypted data while they are “trying to decrypt it or analyze its technical features.”

While this is done under the purpose of trying to protect the American people from terrorist actions in the NSA’s more than 50-year-long efforts and specialization in code breaking, many worry that these back doors and vulnerabilities being inserted into internet programs may be exploited by others as well. “’The risk is that when you build a back door into systems, you’re not the only one to exploit it,’ said Matthew D. Green, a cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “Those back doors could work against U.S. communications, too.’”

According to the Snowden leaks, the NSA spends more than $250 million a year to work with IT industries to influence them to make their technology “exploitable” and easier to eavesdrop on. This includes working with the industries making encryption chips to insert back doors or exploit security flaws or even access the data before it even gets encrypted. Microsoft, for example, has provided access to the pre-encrypted data of their most popular services, including Outlook emails, Skype chats and phone calls, and their cloud storage server, Skydrive. The documents also show the NSA keeps an internal database of encryption keys for specific commercial products to automatically decode items obtained from such services.

The “war” on encryption privacy began around the mid 1990’s when encryption technology caught with the public. The NSA has since fought various legal battles over their levels of access to encrypted data. During the Clinton years, for example, the Clinton Administration fought against various encryption software by proposing a method that would allow the NSA the key to decoding messages that used these services. Political opponents John Ashcroft, John Kerry, and a few other tech and civil liberty notables argued against the proposal on grounds that it would kill the fourth amendment and America’s global technology age. The NSA instead decided to go through with their encryption-breaking tactics covertly, additionally giving them the benefit of having the public believe simple encryption would keep their details private.

Due to Snowden’s recent leaks, the various companies that have come under scrutiny by the public for their involvement with the NSA’s codebreaking. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook were just some services to hand over their users information, either willingly or through legal coercion, and have recently been seeking permission to divulge more details about what the government has requested of them. The email encryption site, Lavabit has even shut down, rather than comply with the NSA’s demands, the founder warning, “I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Encryption, however, still remains an impediment to the NSA’s data collection and analysis, if implemented correctly, Edward Snowden revealed. “Strong crypto systems” can be relied on, but, he warns, the NSA may still simply circumvent the encryption by targeting the computers before encryption or after decryption and simply taking the information then. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1