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Internet security - government hacking/tracking

temujin99

temujin99

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2008
24
0
Mexico City but I sometimes wished I lived in ariz
I have my firewall active and I regularly 'reset' my Safari but don't know of any other action to take to protect myself.

Is it possible that a government agency - US, UK or 'foreign' has the ability to identify me and my computer and location or my mother in law? Do they do 'it' randomly?

If so how do they do it and should I be doing something else to protect my computer?

Thanks
iBook G4 10.4.11 using Safari 4.04
 
temujin99 said:
I have my firewall active and I regularly 'reset' my Safari but don't know of any other action to take to protect myself.

Is it possible that a government agency - US, UK or 'foreign' has the ability to identify me and my computer and location or my mother in law? Do they do 'it' randomly?

If so how do they do it and should I be doing something else to protect my computer?

Thanks
iBook G4 10.4.11 using Safari 4.04
Click to expand...

Of course they can

Anything and everything you do on the internet is trackable
 
temujin99 said:
So how is it done or don't you really know?
Please don't reply if you cannot reply sensibly.
Click to expand...

You're being paranoid. Yeah, it's possible to trace something you do back to your IP address, but unless you're doing something you shouldn't be doing, no one is going to be bothered to pick out some random guy in Mexico City and see what he's up to on the internet.
 
What makes you think that you are actually worth watching? I think you overestimate your place in the world and the government's interest in you, really. If, however, you are up to something that should rationally interest them, I want them watching you.
 
temujin99 said:
So how is it done or don't you really know?
Please don't reply if you cannot reply sensibly.
Click to expand...

temujin99 said:
Is it possible that a government agency - US, UK or 'foreign' has the ability to identify me and my computer and location or my mother in law? Do they do 'it' randomly?
Click to expand...

If you take more than 2 seconds to think about what you're asking you'll realize how ridiculous this is. The populations of the US and UK (or any other country with the ability to monitor internet activity on an individual basis) contain hundreds of millions of people, most connected to the internet in some way, shape, or form. The workforce of said monitoring agencies is a minuscule percentage of a minuscule percentage of the overall population. They can't (and won't) bother "randomly" searching through internet logs when they could be concentrating on those nodes with suspicious activity occuring.

Don't do anything illegal and nobody will have any reason to take notice of you. "How" it is done should not concern you.
 
JNB said:
What makes you think that you are actually worth watching? I think you overestimate your place in the world and the government's interest in you, really. If, however, you are up to something that should rationally interest them, I want them watching you.
Click to expand...

Nailed it.
 
miles01110 said:
They can't (and won't) bother "randomly" searching through internet logs when they could be concentrating on those nodes with suspicious activity occuring.
Click to expand...

You're right, there's not enough people for random monitoring. So it's done automatically, for the most part. As the WSJ put it in 2008:

"According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records.

"The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns.

"Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected."

When I worked for NSA thirty-five years ago (before it was publicly known) we were forbidden to do any domestic spying. Apparently Bush used a 9/11 anti-terrorist resolution to drop the domestic and warrant requirements. I do not know the current status of all this.

I wonder if Google has some triggers as well. If a group of people within the same general area all start searching for "how to make a b*mb", that's suspicious.
 
miles01110 said:
Ok, you're right. I was more referring to a human selecting an IP to look at for the day. I eluded to concentrating on the nodes on which suspicious activity is occuring, which are flagged via various automated crawlers (which I would also argue [semantically] is not "random" either :p).
Click to expand...

You were right, random searches aren't very fruitful.

Back in the mid 1960s, The Phone Company had a secret monitoring program called "tentacle" or something like that. Operators would randomly listen in on calls to see if a crime was occuring or being planned. It was meant to be helpful. In some ways, it was an extension of the old party-line with operator days.

IIRC, out of each million monitored calls, they only heard like one or two threatening ones, so it was not a success from that standpoint.

It only lasted a year or so, and was stopped due to the fear of negative publicity. Wish I could remember the program name. Sigh. Getting old.
 
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