Why are so many servers located in countries with aggressive internet spying programs?

[bringlavabitback1 9]

First of all I love the configuration setup. I can tell this is a security conscious VPN provider because they use certificates/keys instead of just the user/password. But that makes me wonder why so many of the servers are in countries with aggressive internet spying programs. UK, France, Germany, USA, and almost other European location are all carrying out large scale internet surveillance programs. That leaves only Singapore, Switzerland, Romania, and Luxembourg as possible options for people who want more privacy assurances (and Singapore is the only one of those that is not under EU control). How about adding some servers in Brazil, Panama, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, and other countries that have better privacy laws or at least are more spread out in the world?

[NaDre 157]

First of all I love the configuration setup. I can tell this is a security conscious VPN provider because they use certificates/keys instead of just the user/password. But that makes me wonder why so many of the servers are in countries with aggressive internet spying programs. UK, France, Germany, USA, and almost other European location are all carrying out large scale internet surveillance programs. That leaves only Singapore, Switzerland, Romania, and Luxembourg as possible options for people who want more privacy assurances (and Singapore is the only one of those that is not under EU control). How about adding some servers in Brazil, Panama, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, and other countries that have better privacy laws or at least are more spread out in the world?

 

Because people want access to geo-restricted web sites there?

 

I doubt that the NSA or GCHQ is much concerned about this. And clearly a lot of other people think the same.

 

For that matter, I doubt that the NSA and GCHQ care much about torrenting either.

 

The only way to be completely private on the internet is not to use it.

[amnesty 18]

Hello and welcome. This is agreat provider, they are quite conciencious about Net Nuetrality. I think you'll like it. I've used a few providers in the past and found this service and it's staff to be the best.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Germany is having a bit of a dissagreement with the EU over storing of logs. Romania was but they decided to comply. However, Germany is adamant about not complying. They do not believe logs should be kept for that long (6 months I think). The Netherlands is also very concientious about citizens privacy. They are not happy at all with the way Google drove around their neighborhoods with cameras for Google Maps and came back with taller mounts for the cameras to film over fences. That doesn't really address your privacy concerns but IMHO they to respect our right to privacy. Swedish law does as well and I was very surprised to hear a branch of their government were in bed with the NSA. I haven't been following their representitives responses too closely.

 

I don't want to bash any country (or culture) but I'm not too comfortable about one of those countries you recomended. They are run by a mobster and don't repspect people's civil/human rights. At least, they haven't had too good of a track record of late. So I'd imagine they wouldn't respect their citizens privacy either.

 

I live in the U.S. and have a very comfortable lifestyle here. However, I would've moved if it weren't for my commitments and responsibilities here. If I had a choice, I wouldn't hesitate in relocating to the EU. Perhaps I'm being naive but I believe they have evolved further when it comes to privacy (or civil rights) as well as other things which are beyond the scope of this topic.

 

I really like your idea about Brazil and would have to agree with @Nadre, we'd need to unplug from the Net if we wanted our privacy.

 

It is certainly helpful to physically tap into com lines but it's not a requirement. This is an example of traffic being diverted to Russia, Belarus and Iceland:

 

http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Are+large+scale+Man+in+The+Middle+attacks+underway%3F/17075

 

There is a link to more detailed analysis on this page.

 

Keep coming back. It works if you work it ;-)

[NaDre 157]

...

It is certainly helpful to physically tap into com lines but it's not a requirement. This is an example of traffic being diverted to Russia, Belarus and Iceland:

 

http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Are+large+scale+Man+in+The+Middle+attacks+underway%3F/17075

 

...

 

There was also the great diversion of traffic to China a few years ago:

 

http://arstechnica.com/security/2010/11/how-china-swallowed-15-of-net-traffic-for-18-minutes/

 

Perhaps I will give in a bit to paranoia.

 

Now that the NSA has the SSL keys for most of the major services in the U.S., probably Russia and China have them too? Given what Edward Snowden was able to walk away with, how many people with less lofty ethics had already done the same for $, or because of blackmail? Old fashioned spying has not stopped. Will the database with the SSL keys be any more secure? So if this sort of thing happens now, they can decrypt it too, rather than just save metadata?

[Royee 10]

How about VPN chaining 3-4+ VPN providers to be totally 100% sure?

 

One could then run Whonix with Tor

 

Or VPN with Tor, it will be much slower but at least your IP will not be given up to Air at all however I believe Tor network will see your IP ?

 

I still feel vpn chaining a few decent VPN providers gives you that speed advantage and I believe you do not give up your real IP when on tor network since you are VPN chained to 3-4 + providers.

 

Not connecting to the internet is the safe option but then again its not an option !

[amnesty 18]

Perhaps I will give in a bit to paranoia.

 

Tell me about it. I'm not going to get into details on a public Forum but I was paid a visit by a certain U.S. government agency in September. I suppose being born in IR might have had something to do with it, perhaps also registering for the draft (military) when I was 18 and living here for 50 years ? Maybe because my cousin served on the USS Nimitz. My mind was wondering all sorts of things. It was probably none of them. Did you know the Nimitz has two Nuclear power plants? One is a backup. You'd think if the primary went south they'd be jumping overboard... LOL.

The next week I noticed my VPN speed was slower and my (not technical) roommate even noticed his speeds were sluggish. The ISP said everything was fine after (Flash) speedtests within their network were OK. Air staff didn't notice anything on their end. Then our smartphones had issues connecting to my WAP. I noticed two (unknown) MAC addresses leasing IP Addresses on my network, not responding to pings. I knocked them off and assigned addresses to all our hosts. Last week one of them were back using a static address and I think was running Tor. 4 connections, one to 443 and three to 9001. There was another issues but I can't remember what it was. I wonder how they knew I was home on a Friday afternoon...LOL. My friend (a security type) thinks it was a neighbor that hacked into my WPA-2 WAP, so I changed the passwd and use MAC filtering and haven't seen anything for 8 days.

I am being melodramatic. All these events really happened but I'm not that concerned about it. Really just want to be left alone. Besides, there's no hiding from them if they're determined. Who knows, maybe these keystrokes are being sent to Utah... HAHAHAHA. I'm not running around telling people this but I don't know any of you so WTF. Felt kinda good to vent a bit.

 

Now that the NSA has the SSL keys for most of the major services in the U.S., probably Russia and China have them too? Given what Edward Snowden was able to walk away with, how many people with less lofty ethics had already done the same for $, or because of blackmail? Old fashioned spying has not stopped. Will the database with the SSL keys be any more secure? So if this sort of thing happens now, they can decrypt it too, rather than just save metadata?

Good point about the ethics.

[amnesty 18]

How about VPN chaining 3-4+ VPN providers to be totally 100% sure?

 

One could then run Whonix with Tor

 

I'd like to mess around with Whonix but I'm not sure I could boot up with it on my mac (using bootcamp).

 

Or VPN with Tor, it will be much slower but at least your IP will not be given up to Air at all however I believe Tor network will see your IP ?

 

@Nadre made an interesting observation about VPN over Tor The circuit does not change for the duration of the VPN connection.

However, I believe this would have circumvented the vulnerability the FBI exploited earlier this year. I think it was retrieving Tor users' public IP Address and MAC address.

 

I still feel vpn chaining a few decent VPN providers gives you that speed advantage and I believe you do not give up your real IP when on tor network since you are VPN chained to 3-4 + providers.

 

Yes, for the extremely privacy conscious this would be pretty effective.

 

Not connecting to the internet is the safe option but then again its not an option !

So true, even my 84 yr old father is online. He forgets how to switch sources on his TV but has no problem with e-mail, voip and stuff :-)

[bringlavabitback1 9]

 

First of all I love the configuration setup. I can tell this is a security conscious VPN provider because they use certificates/keys instead of just the user/password. But that makes me wonder why so many of the servers are in countries with aggressive internet spying programs. UK, France, Germany, USA, and almost other European location are all carrying out large scale internet surveillance programs. That leaves only Singapore, Switzerland, Romania, and Luxembourg as possible options for people who want more privacy assurances (and Singapore is the only one of those that is not under EU control). How about adding some servers in Brazil, Panama, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, and other countries that have better privacy laws or at least are more spread out in the world?

 

Because people want access to geo-restricted web sites there?

 

I doubt that the NSA or GCHQ is much concerned about this. And clearly a lot of other people think the same.

 

For that matter, I doubt that the NSA and GCHQ care much about torrenting either.

 

The only way to be completely private on the internet is not to use it.

 

Actually the NSA has been very interested in dragnet surveillance, maybe even more so than targetting specific individuals. Your normal web browsing reveals a lot of details about you, that is why everyone from the NSA to Google is trying to track them. If you aren't interested in privacy, why not just use a proxy?

 

Hello and welcome. This is agreat provider, they are quite conciencious about Net Nuetrality. I think you'll like it. I've used a few providers in the past and found this service and it's staff to be the best.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Germany is having a bit of a dissagreement with the EU over storing of logs. Romania was but they decided to comply. However, Germany is adamant about not complying. They do not believe logs should be kept for that long (6 months I think). The Netherlands is also very concientious about citizens privacy. They are not happy at all with the way Google drove around their neighborhoods with cameras for Google Maps and came back with taller mounts for the cameras to film over fences. That doesn't really address your privacy concerns but IMHO they to respect our right to privacy. Swedish law does as well and I was very surprised to hear a branch of their government were in bed with the NSA. I haven't been following their representitives responses too closely.

 

I don't want to bash any country (or culture) but I'm not too comfortable about one of those countries you recomended. They are run by a mobster and don't repspect people's civil/human rights. At least, they haven't had too good of a track record of late. So I'd imagine they wouldn't respect their citizens privacy either.

 

I live in the U.S. and have a very comfortable lifestyle here. However, I would've moved if it weren't for my commitments and responsibilities here. If I had a choice, I wouldn't hesitate in relocating to the EU. Perhaps I'm being naive but I believe they have evolved further when it comes to privacy (or civil rights) as well as other things which are beyond the scope of this topic.

 

I really like your idea about Brazil and would have to agree with @Nadre, we'd need to unplug from the Net if we wanted our privacy.

 

It is certainly helpful to physically tap into com lines but it's not a requirement. This is an example of traffic being diverted to Russia, Belarus and Iceland:

 

http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Are+large+scale+Man+in+The+Middle+attacks+underway%3F/17075

 

There is a link to more detailed analysis on this page.

 

Keep coming back. It works if you work it ;-)

 

Germany might pretend not to comply but we know better. German Intelligence has spied aggressively on German citizens and has willingly worked with the NSA. The same thing is known to be happening in France, UK, and such. Romania is probably safer than Germany, but it would still nice to have more options to chose from that are outside of the US and EU to feel more secure.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden

http://www.dw.de/der-spiegel-germany-to-expand-internet-surveillance/a-16885711

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intelligence-agencies-used-nsa-spying-program-a-912173.html

 

How about VPN chaining 3-4+ VPN providers to be totally 100% sure?

 

One could then run Whonix with Tor

 

Or VPN with Tor, it will be much slower but at least your IP will not be given up to Air at all however I believe Tor network will see your IP ?

 

I still feel vpn chaining a few decent VPN providers gives you that speed advantage and I believe you do not give up your real IP when on tor network since you are VPN chained to 3-4 + providers.

 

Not connecting to the internet is the safe option but then again its not an option !

 

Chaining several VPN together is the safest option but most of us cant afford that, not to mention its time consuming. I am not hacking or doing anything that would warrant extreme measures, but I think for a single VPN you have high safety if you use a server in a jurisdiction that does not cooperate with your state. For example, Chinese users would feel safer using American exit nodes, but not Hong Kong. EU users might feel safer using Hong Kong, but not Sweden. Having a good seperation of servers across the world in different jurisdictions makes everyone safer.

[user37 28]

The nsa does not have it that easy, if they did the us government would not have to threaten and bully free people with false charges of treason in order to get the encrypted data from American businesses.

[NaDre 157]

 

...

Because people want access to geo-restricted web sites there?

...

Actually the NSA has been very interested in dragnet surveillance, maybe even more so than targetting specific individuals. Your normal web browsing reveals a lot of details about you, that is why everyone from the NSA to Google is trying to track them.

 

Is there anyone who does not realize this? Did I actually say something that made you think I was unaware of this?

 

If you aren't interested in privacy, why not just use a proxy?

 

Again, did I say somewhere that I was not interested in privacy? You asked a question with an obvious answer and I gave you the answer.

 

In a previous post I said:

 

...

Technology alone will not protect anyone if we end up living in a police state. ...

 

I doubt that many of us using this service would really be up to exercising the discipline necessary in such circumstances.

 

I should have added that if we did exercise the necessary discipline, there may well be no point in using the internet. Most of the services that are any use would be off limits because our browsers would be so crippled. And even with our massively crippled browsers there would be many things we would like to be able to do we would just have to stop ourselves from doing.

 

Life is full of risk. And compromises. One takes risks and makes compromises because one decides it is worth what one gets for it.

 

Also, people should not delude themselves that hiding from the NSA (for example) is simple. For example, if you go through a VPN server in some far-flung country from a starting point in the U.S. to reach a server back in the U.S., with no other hops, you have gained nothing. The NSA has access to all traffic in and out of the U.S.. I am sure they know the entry and exit address of every commercial OpenVPN server. And they are saving metadata (probably including a guess at the type of content based on deep packet analysis, even if it is not saving the full content) for possible later analysis. You need to make it hard to guess what traffic leaving the U.S. might correspond to traffic entering the U.S..

[amnesty 18]

 

Hello and welcome. This is agreat provider, they are quite conciencious about Net Nuetrality. I think you'll like it. I've used a few providers in the past and found this service and it's staff to be the best.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Germany is having a bit of a dissagreement with the EU over storing of logs. Romania was but they decided to comply. However, Germany is adamant about not complying. They do not believe logs should be kept for that long (6 months I think). The Netherlands is also very concientious about citizens privacy. They are not happy at all with the way Google drove around their neighborhoods with cameras for Google Maps and came back with taller mounts for the cameras to film over fences. That doesn't really address your privacy concerns but IMHO they to respect our right to privacy. Swedish law does as well and I was very surprised to hear a branch of their government were in bed with the NSA. I haven't been following their representitives responses too closely.

 

I don't want to bash any country (or culture) but I'm not too comfortable about one of those countries you recomended. They are run by a mobster and don't repspect people's civil/human rights. At least, they haven't had too good of a track record of late. So I'd imagine they wouldn't respect their citizens privacy either.

 

I live in the U.S. and have a very comfortable lifestyle here. However, I would've moved if it weren't for my commitments and responsibilities here. If I had a choice, I wouldn't hesitate in relocating to the EU. Perhaps I'm being naive but I believe they have evolved further when it comes to privacy (or civil rights) as well as other things which are beyond the scope of this topic.

 

I really like your idea about Brazil and would have to agree with @Nadre, we'd need to unplug from the Net if we wanted our privacy.

 

It is certainly helpful to physically tap into com lines but it's not a requirement. This is an example of traffic being diverted to Russia, Belarus and Iceland:

 

http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Are+large+scale+Man+in+The+Middle+attacks+underway%3F/17075

 

There is a link to more detailed analysis on this page.

 

Keep coming back. It works if you work it ;-)

 

Germany might pretend not to comply but we know better. German Intelligence has spied aggressively on German citizens and has willingly worked with the NSA. The same thing is known to be happening in France, UK, and such. Romania is probably safer than Germany, but it would still nice to have more options to chose from that are outside of the US and EU to feel more secure.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden

http://www.dw.de/der-spiegel-germany-to-expand-internet-surveillance/a-16885711

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intelligence-agencies-used-nsa-spying-program-a-912173.html

 

I stand corrected.