Google Wants To Help You Tiptoe Around the NSA & the Great Firewall of China 140
Kyle Jacoby writes "The NSA was right when it postulated that the mere knowledge of the existence of their program could weaken its ability to function. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which serve to mask the source and destination of data by routing it through a third-party server, have been a popular method for maintaining internet anonymity for the paranoid and prudent. However, the all-but-silent fall of secure email server Lavabit, and VPN provider CryptoSeal, have shown us just how pervasive the government's eye on our communications is. These companies chose to fold rather than to divulge customer data entrusted to them, which raises the million-dollar question: how many have chosen to remain open and silently hand over the keys to your data? Google has decided to put the private back in VPN by supporting uProxy, a project developed at the University of Washington with help from Brave New Software. Still using a VPN schema, their aim is to keep the VPN amongst friends (literally). Of course, you'll need a friend who is willing to let you route your net through their tubes. Their simple integration into Firefox and Chrome will lower the barrier, creating a decentralized VPN architecture that would make sweeping pen register orders more difficult, and would also make blocking VPNs a rather difficult task for countries like China, who block citizens' access to numerous websites. On a related note, when will the public finally demand that communications which pass encrypted through a third party still retain an reasonable expectation of privacy (rendering them pen register order-resistant)?"
Re:A little late to the party... (Score:4, Informative)
trust(google) == trust(nsa) == 0
that's all.
Re:but not on Google Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
Re:False. (Score:5, Informative)
The Tor Browser bundle with HTTPS Everywhere works perfectly fine with Google.
Not during prime time. I have to hop to a new exit point sometimes 5 or 6 times to find one that Google hasn't decided to lock out. Entering a CAPTCHA with every query is annoying, but whatever... but just plain failing... it does that often. Especially during prime time hours (6pm-2am US Eastern)
Re:Trust (Score:5, Informative)
"Trust me," said the fox to the hen, "You can keep your eggs in my basket and I'll make sure the other foxes don't eat them."
Google is saying exactly the opposite. Google is saying you should find someone you do find trustworthy, and route your traffic through their machine, not suggesting that you trust Google.
Re:A little late to the party... (Score:5, Informative)
Google was the first to roll out SSL for everything, the first to do SSL forward secrecy ... it's not like there was nothing done before Snowden.
Re:A little late to the party... (Score:2, Informative)
Yep, definitely a bug.
trust(google) == trust(nsa) == 0
Add parens.
(trust(google) == trust(nsa)) == 0
A little more clarity
(trust(google) == trust(nsa)) == false
(x == false) can be written as "not x"
trust(google) != trust(nsa)
Therefore, the statement appears to be saying that neither google nor the nsa can be trusted, but is actually saying that you can trust one or the other but not both (xor)