A broad program of constant observation/interception of communications and behavior of individuals and organizations by state and (rarely) non-state actors, including foreign and domestic intelligence agencies.
Questions tagged [surveillance]
135 questions
535
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Police forcing me to install Jingwang spyware app, how to minimize impact?
Chinese police are forcing whole cities to install an Android spyware app Jingwang Weishi. They are stopping people in the street and detaining those who refuse to install it.
Knowing that I may be forced to install it sooner or later, what are my…
Citizen
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What are the implications of NSA surveillance on the average internet user?
It would appear as though the tinfoil hat-wearing were vindicated today, as news broke of the true scale of the U.S. government's surveillance of its citizens' online activities, conducted primarily through the NSA and seemingly beyond the realm of…
nitrl
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Can my employer see what I do on the internet when I am connected to the company network?
This is an attempt at a canonical question following this discussion on Meta. The aim is to produce basic answers that can be understood by the general audience.
Let's say I browse the web and use different apps while connected to the network at…
INV3NT3D
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Best practices for Tor use, in light of released NSA slides
It has been known in the security community that a tool as versatile as Tor is likely the target of intense interest from intelligence agencies. While the FBI has admitted responsibility for a Tor malware attack, the involvement of SIGINT…
nitrl
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8 answers
Do advertisers listen as we talk?
A person talks about a certain thing (product or service) with another person and a short time after the talk the person gets the advertising of the discussed thing on the mobile or desktop device.
I heard and read about such occurrences and didn't…
Evgeniy
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Did US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet?
This question is meant as a canonical question in regard to the US and UK spy agencies compromising end nodes and encryption between nodes to spy on people they suspect to be terrorists. However, this has the side effect of significantly elevating…
Lucas Kauffman
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Why would the government collect Wi-Fi SSIDs via manual door-to-door questioning of citizens?
I live in a country with little freedom on the Internet (not as strict as in China, but some sites, particularly anti-government sites are inaccessible without a VPN). Recently the government just went collecting the Wi-Fi names of every house. I…
Ooker
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What leaked mass surveillance capabilities have not been explained by vulnerabilities we have learned about since 2014?
At the end of 2014, there were reports and talks about the cracking capabilities of the NSA and other Five Eyes agencies, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden. The analyzed data revealed that, e.g. VPNs and HTTPS connections were decrypted…
tarleb
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Why did Poitras and Greenwald put their batteries in the fridge?
cnet.com says:
Even in Snowden's room, the group took precautions not to be overheard. Greenwald and Poitras would remove the batteries from their mobile phones and put them in refrigerator of Snowden's minibar (...)
Is there any security reason…
d33tah
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Surveillance: blocking laptop's microphone from spying on you?
It is a known fact that your laptop camera can be hacked to spy on you. While the most often mentioned remedy is very low tech yet effective, everyone seems to omit the fact that the microphone can be used to spy on you too. I have no proof but it…
daniel.sedlacek
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Can governments intercept end-to-end encrypted Whatsapp communication through lawful interception?
Since Whatapp started end-to-end encryption with an option for users to verify keys, many government security agencies, like the Indian one, red-flagged such use of encryption.
Now, Yesterday the Parliament was informed by Communications and IT…
CrownedEagle
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Never spell a word the same way twice?
A long time ago I was reading about Renaissance-era ciphers and I remembered this quote:
David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers, quotes Giovanni Battista Porta who published, in 1563, a famous cryptographic book, De Furtivis Literarum Notis:
"He…
jackvsworld
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Does the telecom provider need physical access to the SIM card to clone it?
In many dictatorships SIM card cloning is used by the police (working together with the telco) to spy on dissidents, journalists etc. Some people say that you need the authentication key on the SIM card to clone it so that physical access…
Pedro
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How practical is a laser microphone and how to protect against it?
A laser microphone is a "surveillance device that uses a laser beam to detect sound vibrations in a distant object". - Wikipedia.
It's also known as a Laser Based Listening System (LBLS).
Firstly, how practical or easy is it to use a laser…
Bob Ortiz
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What expectation of privacy is there with US-based vendors with the LavaBit and SilentCircle shutdown?
Lavabit hosts a secure messaging service that was recently shut down. Likewise SilentCircle has preemptively done the same thing with their email-based service.
It seems that the justification for these actions is to prevent the US government from…
makerofthings7
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