I didn’t, but I do now.
…the NSA tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called “the Linux Journal – the Original Magazine of the Linux Community,” and calls it an “extremist forum.”
One of the most important takeaways, tech security expert Bruce Schneier highlights, is the “very disturbing” fact that “this isn’t just metadata; this is ‘full take’ content that’s stored forever.”
Linux users aren’t the only “extremists” in the NSA’s eyes. The agency also engages in long-term surveillance of people who use – or even simply search for – anonymity-protecting tools like Tails and Tor.
I’ve been a Linux user since the 90s, so I must be a really hard core extremist.
These people (the NSA and similar ilk) ought to be ashamed of themselves, but obviously they are not. They probably imagine that they are helping the country, the way SWAT team thugs imagine themselves to be heroes.
And no doubt they consider anyone who doesn’t like them an “extremist.”
Comments
One response to “Did you know that Linux users are “extremists”?”
I’m somewhat skeptical of Tor’s security. It was funded at its outset by the U.S. government, and supposedly still gets some significant portion of its funding from government grants.
I understand, for the most part, the technical reasons why Tor is supposed to be secure. But considering its origins, it seems likely to have a loophole somewhere. Everything I’ve seen from Edward Snowden’s document dump indicates that Tor is secure unless your browser or PC is compromised.
But then, who exactly was Snowden working for?