United Liberty
Talk Like a Terrorist: Use Skype
Fri, 11/21/2008 - 12:26pm | posted by Luke Brady
- Don’t like the Patriot Act?
- Want to make sure no one eavesdrops on your personal calls?
- Want Your IM’s to be untraceable?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, Skype (the makers of KaZaA) is for you.
Skype is a free peer to peer IM and VoIP program. You can also pay a piddly $2.95/month for unlimited U.S. calls. As long as these calls are made to other Skype users, they are untraceable for the following reasons:
- Skype is located in Luxembourg (outside of the United Sates).
- Keys used by Skype cannot be turned over to the FBI because Skype does not hold the keys themselves. The key is only known by the computers using the program to connect with each other.
- Internet communication is inherently hard to trace because of how packets can be routed.
In summary, use Skype and talk like a terrorist.
When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.Thomas Jefferson
For those interested in a deeper dive into the technical side of Skype you may do so here.
Luke, are you -trying- to get me on the domestic terrorist list? lol.
Funny stuff.
Hey doesn’t that CNN article show Skype is insecure?
Yet both Schneier and Simson Garfinkel, an associate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University who has studied Skype’s security, believe it would actually be trivial for the company to listen in on conversations.
“I can think of five or six different ways to eavesdrop on Skype. It’s not that hard if you are the Skype company and want to provide legal access to law enforcement,” Garfinkel said.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9963028-38.html
“Jennifer Caukin, Skype’s director of corporate communications replied to us: “We have not received any subpoenas or court orders asking us to perform a live interception or wiretap of Skype-to-Skype communications. In any event, because of Skype’s peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques, Skype would not be able to comply with such a request.”
…
The upshot is that if Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, or so on received a wiretap order for text or voice flowing through their IM networks, they could (and would) be able to comply because the services are centralized.”
As a programmer, I can tell you that thinking something will work and actually getting it to work can be two different things. But, I won’t rule out Skype’s sucsceptability (sp?) to eavedropping. I will say this, Skype was designed to thwart eavedropping mechanisms, and is probably one of the most secure ways to communicate today.
“In this free nation we do not choose to be ruled, we elect to be governed.”
— Barry Goldwater
Check this out:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49238X20081003
If they did it in china, why should they not do it in the US and anywhere else?
You want to be encrypted, use plugins for pidgin or send mails pgp encrypted.
The Chinese version is different than the normal Skype version that, for example, people use in the U.S. Your article also sites how Google has bent over backwards to appease the Chinese government.
What’s your preffered chat/VoIP service?
“In this free nation we do not choose to be ruled, we elect to be governed.”
— Barry Goldwater
Oh and i forgot, the CIA did eavedrop on Money transfers all around the world in belgium, thats the county right above Luxembourg. If they want to, they can.
Money transfers are different than chat/VoIP communications.
Skype’s communication is decentralized meaning calls and chats do not necessarily travel the same path twice. If you use AIM, your chat is going through their servers before it reaches it’s final destination.
“In this free nation we do not choose to be ruled, we elect to be governed.”
— Barry Goldwater
I cant recommend skype enough….the video quality is excellent.
True hard core privacy geeks however, do not trust closed source ecryption programs. Skype is closed source.
Yo can always use skype to send a pgp file.
Luke got me to use Skype.
There’s nothing better.
No phone company can beat $3.00 a month, and you have a real US phone number that people can call and leave you voice mails at.
The only catch… you need to be near WiFi to use it, like that’s too hard.
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