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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsXKeyscore Exposed: How NSA Tracks All German Tor Users As 'Extremists'
Published time: July 03, 2014 13:15
Edited time: July 03, 2014 16:27
The NSA has been revealed to mark and consider potential "extremists" all users of the internet anonymizer service Tor. Among those are hundreds of thousands of privacy concerned people like journalists, lawyers and rights activists.
Searching for encryption software like the Linux-based operating system Tails also places you on the NSA grid, as Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz revealed on the German site Tagesschau. The report is based on analysis of the source code of the software used by NSAs electronic surveillance program XKeyscore.
Tor is a system of servers, which routes user requests through a layer of secured connections to make it impossible to identify a users IP from the addresses of the websites he/she visits. The network of some 5,000 is operated by enthusiasts and used by hundreds of thousands of privacy-concerned people worldwide. Some of them live in countries with oppressive regimes, which punish citizens for visiting websites they deem inappropriate.
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The NSA was particularly surveilling German-based Tor Directory Authorities. One is operated by the Germany-based hacker group Chaos Computer Club, the other by computer science student Sebastian Hahn, who told journalists that the revelation is shocking.
Read more: http://rt.com/news/170208-nsa-spies-tor-users/
See also the other thread citing the above mentioned "Tagesschau" report, one of several on this topic this afternoon on ARD (Germany's main TV station and most reputable source of breaking news):
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-u-ausschuss-100.html