For some of us, it comes as no great surprise when another story reveals more information on the how we are monitored in the digital world. However latest revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, really do illustrate the stark reality of the complete and total lack of privacy we have online.
The problem with the vast majority of electronic communication – web and email particularly, as far as privacy is concerned it has no built in security. This traffic is distributed mostly in clear text by a huge network of cables, servers, switches and routers across the planet – all owned by a variety of people. This co-operative model has enabled a huge network like the internet to grow so quickly but it has done so at the expense of our privacy. We sit their idly communicating using PCs and phones and everything we can do tracked back to our specific IP address tied to an exact location.
Tap into this network anywhere, perhaps an underwater cable or installing a network tap in a telecoms site (read about Room 641A) and you’ve instantly got access to data belonging to millions of daily web transactions carried out every day. That’s web requests and emails from every one of us – finding their way into intelligence databases across the planet.
Most of these we will never find out about of course, but there’s little doubt they exists. The latest to be outed by Snowden include a huge secret monitoring station based in the Middle East and run by the UK intelligence services. We don’t know where exactly it is, although in reality it could be virtually anywhere and merely consist of a few small pieces of hardware. It was revealed that this particular station extracted data from undersea cables passing through the middle east. The information is then processed and passed through to GCHQ in Cheltenham then shared with the UK’s intelligence allies – such as the National Security Agency (NSA).
This particular station can allegedly access the underwater cables that transport internet data between major land links. As such they normally carry a huge proportion of internet traffic in the region, all being siphoned into Western security databases for analysis.
The station was apparently set up by the last UK Government, using a warrant authorised by the Foreign secretary David Milliband. Implemented by GCHQ it would have already intercepted a huge amount of data from people across the world. It is likely with the continued cooperation of companies like BT and Vodaphone who enable GCHQ to monitor the majority of internet traffic that enters the UK.
In reality our only real protection to our privacy is that of obscurity. The enormous amount of data involved means manipulating and searching through it, is by far the most difficult aspect. However the costs of data storage are falling exponentially and it is more than likely that our emails, messages and web requests will sit stored until technology to analyse it more efficiently becomes available.
There are many laws and statutes across the globe protecting our privacy but in reality they mean little. If a UK security agency is prepared
It is a wake up call though -, first watch this video and then give thanks to Edward Snowden for revealing to us.