People assume that while in public spaces that privacy isn't a right afforded them what with all the surveillance and security cameras stuck into every crevice. That said one might assume they would have some privacy within the sanctity of their residence but the NSA and GCHQ have taken that right from us as well. No, longer can one assume that encryption software meant to protect your personal details such as banking records because government security agencies have determined that those vital records should be seen by them thereby violating rights. Their excuse is that full intrusion into your life helps them to fight terrorism. How one equates with the other is beyond me.
The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees thatinternet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.
The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".
Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.
Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.
The files, from both the NSA and GCHQ, were obtained by the Guardian, and the details are being published today in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica. They reveal:
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