August 29, 2014 • 39 mins
In today's episode, our friends at TechStuff join us for a closer look at the tricky business of staying anonymous on the internet, as well as the facts about the NSA's surveillance program.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. All right, Hello,
welcome to the show. If that intro by our super
producer Noel was familiar, then that means you are in
(00:23):
the right place. Ladies and gentlemen. This is stuff they
don't want you to know. I'm Ben. You're probably wondering
where Matt is. He is off on an adventure that
maybe we'll get to in the course of this show.
But in place of Matt, today we have not one,
but two very special guests from tech Stuff, from brain Stuff,
(00:47):
from Forward Thinking. I don't even know how you guys
found time to come on this show, Jonathan Strickland and
Lauren vogelbaumb We found time because we literally just recorded
another Tech Stuff episode with you, like like ten minutes ago.
Thanks for not giving away our time travel scheme. That
was good. I'm glad that we have got that out
(01:08):
of the bag out of the bag Man, which is
only gonna be funny if you listen to the other episode, right,
because this is a sequel that's a compacit a sister episode.
It is. It is now. You guys were kind enough
or add poor enough taste to have me on your
show just a few minutes ago when we recorded a
(01:28):
great episode on how to serve the Web anonymously or
whether it's even possible. And this was us to something
that we thought was right up the stuff they don't
want you to know, Ali, because listeners out there, now,
you guys know as well as everybody else does now
(01:48):
that it turns out the United States government in particular
was putting a lot more energy into tracking people than
we had all thought. Yeah, I mean, even if you
take it at face value, where you know you have
this this system specifically the n s A we're talking
about here, with the prison specifically with yes, that if
even if you take it at face value, that what
(02:10):
they were looking for were foreign agents. So if you
are a United States citizen, then in theory you would
not a United States citizen who is not involved in
one of these schemes, You would not be considered a
foreign agent and therefore not part of the surveillance. Even
if you take that at face value, they would look
(02:32):
for people who they did identify as foreign agents, and
the people that that those folks talked to, right, Yeah,
they played the Kevin Bacon game. Yeah. And if you've
ever played the Kevin Bacon game, you know that it
gets pretty easy to start linking two people you never
thought would have had a connection to each other together.
It doesn't really take that many levels of separation, right, Right.
(02:56):
And furthermore, they're really collecting information on everyone and sort
through it in order to find these specific people. But
the fact that they're collecting and storing this information about
all of us, it's creepy. It's problematic. So again, even
taken on face value, it's it's it's troublesome. And then
when you realize the actual methodology, it becomes downright concerning.
(03:19):
I mean it's not just that, oh, there's some issues
here from a technological perspective, the very methodology is problematic.
I think that's well said. So one of my first
questions for you guys before you really get into this is, uh,
if let's say twenty years ago, if someone had come
up to you in and said the government is watching
(03:43):
everything and it's just going to watch more, would you
have would you have thought it was sort of conspiracy
bunk or would you have thought there was a possibility
of it happening, I would have thought bunk for sure. Yeah,
and it's and it's largely because uh well, I mean
ninety four wasn't there at Yeah. When you're talking about
(04:05):
how much data gets created or transferred or copied or
transmitted however you want to look at it, it's an
astronomical number. It is an enormous number. Just let's just
take YouTube as the example of data creation. Okay, so
on YouTube, every single minute that passes, more than a
(04:26):
hundred hours of video footage is being uploaded to YouTube.
Some of that's duplicate footage, but it doesn't really matter.
That's a huge amount of information. Now, just kind of extrapolate.
Imagine that the entire Internet, this network of computer networks,
is filled with people who are either creating information or
accessing it in some way. And the accessing of information
(04:48):
does in itself create a certain amount of meta data.
There's information about who, who accessed what and when. This
is such an enormous amount that most of us would
think that being able to to capture it and filter
it and make any meaning of it would be a
gargentean task beyond our capabilities. But it is a gargentean task.
(05:09):
But it's not, as it turns out, beyond our capability exactly.
It turns out that our our technology is sufficiently sophisticated
enough to be able to weed through that kind of stuff,
or at least we're working very hard on it. I mean,
not the three of us at this table, but I'm
personally aware of well. And and Google is a perfect
example of how we should have really kind of re
(05:31):
evaluated this idea that it's just too big, right, because
Google has created a business that, or at least the
forward facing part of their business that that's the search engine.
You know, arguably you would say that the real business
is advertising, but but the search engine is the thing,
the product that we're all familiar with, and it's really
really good. It's a really good search engine if you're
(05:53):
trying to find something specific. And once we realize how
much information is out there and how Google has developed
an algorithm that can effectively find the stuff you actually
want to see, then you start to realize, oh, I
guess it really is possible to build in that a
similar kind of tool that could be useful if you're
(06:14):
looking for signs of activity. Uh, if you happen to
be an enormous government organization that is in charge of
discovering cryptic messages set between foreign agents that could potentially
affect your country, or friends of foreign agents, yes, or
people who know friends of foreign agents. Yes. That's the
problem is that this this ripples outward. Right, if if
(06:36):
it were just the foreign agents, that becomes an issue
because then you have to be able to to reliably
identify a foreign agent versus someone who is not a
foreign agent. But then if you go one ripple outward,
who are these people talking to and why? Well, I
can understand why you would be interested in that, but
they're going to be people in that that one ripple
outward who are not in any way connected with anything nefarious,
(06:58):
but they're going to get swept up in that surveillance. Anyway,
if you go a further ring out, go for it.
That's an enormous number of people. This is what Facebook
is completely built upon, the whole idea of that social network.
If you ever see any of their presentations, you just
see how this this this one small group of people
(07:19):
who have these interconnections between each other become this enormous
mass of people. When you just go out a couple
of steps. Yet now this I'm glad that we're talking
about this because this is something that escapes a lot
of people that the uh, the government agency, the n
s A has automated the collection and analysis of this
(07:43):
of this stuff for people who are concerned. You know,
the n s A is listening in on my phone
calls and reading my emails. They're taking your phone calls
and emails and they're keeping them like like you said, Lauren,
And what they'll do is if you pop up on
a different algorhythm, than they'll actually have a human. Like
any other big organization from a call center to the FBI,
(08:04):
it's kind of difficult to actually get to a human.
You have to go through a few steps. Yeah, dial one,
wait for stuff. You listen to a robot voice and
I hate it, just a side note, I hate it
when the the automated line won't let you just push
a button and you have to stand there wherever you
are and look really stupid and go operator operate. Yes, yes, yes, yea,
(08:30):
And everybody's so solemn. We all just said the same yes.
But um. But but moving from this, we before we
go too deep on the government, we should make a
point that they're not the only people looking at web
activity when we talk about yeah, I mean, companies obviously
are looking at a lot of web activity as well,
(08:51):
for multiple reasons. Uh. Mostly companies are looking at activity
in order to make more money, all right. They want
to be able to sell you stuff better, or to
sell you as a consumer to an advertising company so
that that advertising company can tell you stuff better. Yeah. Yeah,
it all comes down to, you know, where are the dollars,
where are they coming from, and where are they going to?
And so we the users end up playing a big
(09:14):
role in that. I mean we we are the ones
who generate revenue for companies. And you know, if it
weren't that way, the Internet would be a very different place.
For one thing, it would not be nearly as robust
as it is, right, it would it would be mainly
limited to communication lines between things like research institutes and
the government, which, big surprise, that's what originally the Internet
(09:36):
was all about. Our yeah, our ponnett was essentially connections
between scientific research institutes, universities, and government installations. And that
was it, and and that was because you know, that
was what it was built for, was built to be
this really fast communications and networking ability so that people
could share things very effectively. What it's grown into is
(10:00):
this crazy world that melds things like entertainment and commerce
and communications all into one big package, which in many
ways is legitimately awesome. Obviously, we wouldn't have jobs if
there were an internet, or at least we wouldn't have
these jobs we are on the internet right now. Yeah, well,
you guys get paid. I'm here for community service. Your
(10:23):
internship has lasted longer than any other I've ever seen.
That's true. Hey, will you sign off for my hours
before this is? Thanks guys. UM. One question, though, that
a lot of people will have is the following. Just
a little bit of background here. UM, The question is
is surfing anonymously legal? Uh? The background here is that
(10:47):
often the desire to surf anonymously is depicted as one
that is inherently sinister. That is the same sort of
uh perception that is given two things is like torrents
now or peer to peer networks. Peer to peer networks
as they are by themselves, are not sinister or shady
(11:09):
or illegal, right ap. Peer to peer network is just
a means of distribution of files right, But when you
start distributing files that you don't have the right to
distribute network, that's where the illegal activity comes, and then
you end up sort of casting this shadow across the
entire technology. So there are companies like music and movie
companies that just say peer to peer networks alone are
(11:33):
bad because those are a lot of the ways that
that illegal file sharing got spread around, you know, just
a few years ago. Now it's not even that big
of a deal because you can get pretty much everything
in a billion different places. But uh, you know, if
you're talking about just trying to serve anonymously, it all
depends upon where you are in the world. In the
(11:55):
United States, it's not a big deal. There's no law
that you'd be very king by trying to hide your
IP address. The laws that you would be breaking would
be if you tried to do anything illegal while you
were doing that, or even if you weren't, whether or
not you're trying to hide what you're doing. If you're
doing something illegal, that's against the law, right, Yeah, Like
like you like you don't have to use tour to
(12:17):
buy drugs. There are many other reasons that you can
use tor Yeah, but if you do buy drugs. That's
against the law, and then if you're caught, you could
be punished for it, or you will be if you're caught.
I see. Yeah. So so here in the West and
the United States, Canada and so on, there is not
a law against uh surfing the web anonymously. I don't
(12:38):
I don't think it's even against the law to uh
go into some of the deep web stuff to which
we alluded um, which you guys have covered in a
previous episode and Matt and I have covered as well.
We're talking about this Silk Road and and not the
historic one through Central Asia. But as you said, other
countries have different perspectives, like you've got a great example
(12:59):
about China. Sure, yeah, China. They have a program in
China that is called the Golden Shield Project, also more
commonly known as the Great Firewall of China. UH. And
the reason for this is that it said effort i'll
um on part of the Chinese government to censor and
and have surveillance over Internet activities within China, so that
(13:22):
the main purpose of it is to prevent objectionable material
as defined by the Chinese government from getting to Chinese
citizens using the internet. So flat out block some websites
and some search terms and like some yeah things like Facebook.
You can't access Facebook in China using if you were
just trying to connect to a Chinese I s P
(13:44):
and go through methods domain name server. So if you
were to if you were to just use like plug
and play, you're you're just trying to use your browser
to get to certain places. You would find out that
there's some websites you just cannot access that way in China.
In order to access those websites, you have to circumvent
the protections that have been put in place. UH. In general,
(14:08):
this is not seen as a huge deal, right, It's
it's it's it's frowned upon. You're not supposed to do it.
But as far as I am aware, no one has
been UH persecuted and or prosecuted for trying to circumnavigate
the firewall of China. However, if you were to do
something such as post messages that are anti Chinese government
(14:33):
to websites, then that is very much considered against the law,
and you will they will look for you, and if
they find you and catch you, they will punish you. Right,
and it might also be used as perhaps a pretext
for arresting someone, at least in that country, kind of
the same way the tax evasion was the crime for
(14:53):
which Capone was ultimately arrested. Yeah. That in some cases,
depending again upon what country you are in, uh, this
might be the the door that opens up so that
they can get you for what they really want you for.
Right And and when we say we're not especially picking
on China, oh, although I do have to say, there's
one really cool thing that that freaks me out a bit.
(15:16):
And if you are on just the regular you know,
the version of the inner State uh Internet in China.
Every so often these two cartoon police characters will pop
up on the screen just to let you know that
they're they're looking out for you, they're protecting you. They're
protecting and serving by making sure you're not doing anything wrong. Actually,
(15:37):
what they're doing is they're protecting you by making sure
all that terrible information that would flood flood your browser
if if it only had the chance, because they know
you are an upstanding Chinese citizen and would never try
to access that kind of stuff. But that stuff is
trying to get it you no matter what. And those
cops they are making sure that you are going to
be safe from it. They also have blue eyes, which
(15:59):
is very weird. Their names of Chinging and Cha Cha.
It's based on a pun that means police in Chinese.
So check check it out and google it if you
have a chance. Just remember that China will know you
looked at it. And uh so earlier, Um, we we
mentioned toward the onion router, right, and uh what I
(16:20):
wanted to ask about is if you could, because you
guys are the experts here on technical matters, if you
could outline briefly for our listeners, what's the difference between
like a privacy mode on a browser and something like tour.
That's a great question. Yeah, in brief, a privacy browser
(16:41):
on your home computer does absolutely nothing to to protect
what you are doing from anyone aside from someone who
is looking purely at your home computer. Yeah, exactly, the
text mat real quick. While you're doing that, I'll continue
to explain. So, yeah, the privacy mode, what it's doing
is it's preventing stuff that would normally show up and say,
(17:02):
your search history, your browsing history cookies, is preventing all
that kind of stuff from happening so that someone who
gets access to your machine. Can't just look and see
what it is you've been up to. However, anyone who
can see the traffic that's going across your local network
that includes perhaps other machines that are also on the
local network, your router, the modem, your I s P,
(17:25):
all of these entities know exactly what you're doing because
in order for you to get the stuff you're trying
to get, they these entities have to know where to
send it, right right, This is so you know, up
to and including the website that you're accessing, they know
who you are as well, right, Yeah, at least they
know the I P edge, yes, and they know they
know what network it's going to. So really it's it's
(17:47):
you know, you can't hide your IP address perfectly because
if you did, no information would ever come back to
your computer. Now we, uh, we do have an interesting
fact here, and by interesting I mean disturbing. So I'll
just go ahead and ask how much information does someone
a company or a government or whomever need about you
(18:09):
before they can figure out who you are? All right?
This is a kind of fascinating. Did you ever hear
the story about how Target had identified a customer as
being pregnant. It was It turned out to be a
young lady, teenager, and so Target pregnant people are ladies,
(18:29):
that that would be true. That is true, Lauren, thank
you is a good point. A young lady pregnant, Uh,
Harris don't know. Parents don't know, parents don't know. She
has not told them. Uh. And Target starts proactively sending
her offers for things that a pregnant lady wouldn't possibly need.
(18:50):
And her father found the offers and got very upset,
saying like, why is Target sending this unsolit solicited stuff?
What do you what are you saying about? My daughter?
Raised a big fuss about it. You have offended mod dignity.
That's how I pickture him speaking. Yes, it was a
Southern gentleman from the fun city of Savannah there with
(19:12):
a white glove and just slapped the front door. Yeah.
Challenge you, I challenge your entire organization to Yeah. No,
that's not exactly what happened. But he did raise a
fuss and then later wrote a second a follow up
message saying I had a talk with my daughter. It
turns out that I did not. I was not aware
that she was pregnant. But this raised the point of
(19:34):
how did target know? What was it that gave target
the information? How did they predict this? And as it
turned out, it had the company had been watching her
purchase patterns and determined that statistically speaking, she was very
likely pregnant. And so this is an illustration that you
don't have to have actively shared some information about yourself
(19:57):
for an entity or a per son to draw conclusions
about at least your what your physical state is, or
what your your state of mind might be. Even if
it's not your specific name and identity, it could be
enough to be able to single out who you are
from a level that's separate from my name is Jonathan
(20:19):
Strickland and I live in Atlanta, Right, That actually would
be very easy. They're probably very few Joan Strickland's living
in Atlanta. There might be a few, because you know,
there are a lot of other Jonathan Strickland's. Lauren vocal
Bam might be the easiest to paying directly to zoom
in pretty quickly. So the real answer to this question,
(20:41):
according to research specialists, is that thirty three bits of
information called bits of entropy, and this in this identification
business are required in order to narrow it down to
a specific person out of all the people on Earth.
And and these these bits of information can be anything
from from your gender to the type of car you drive,
(21:04):
to your zip code to like, like, it doesn't have
to be the same thirty three bits in order, it
could be any thirty three bits, and bit in this
case means something specific. Like like in the computer world
we talk about digital Uh, you know these binary digits.
That that's what a bit is. It's either a zero
or a one, which you could think of as either
(21:25):
a no or yes. Well, uh, some bits, some pieces
of information represent a single bit, like gender is considered
to be a single bit, putting gender discussions aside. For
for many people, this would be male or female. All right,
that that obviously oversimplifies things, but for the purposes for identification,
(21:47):
male female tends to be uh. The way that they
look at it, very black and white kind of approach.
That represents one bit. Something like your zip code might
be several bits of information that would make up just
one zip code, but all it takes is thirty three bits.
Some of those bits might be connected to a larger concept,
(22:08):
like your model of car, uh, the specific region you
live in, whatever it is your age. That's another good one.
But all you need are thirty three bits worth of
this information to be able to identify. And the reason
for that is you take this yes or no. That's
a base of two, right, You've you've got two options.
You take that too, then you have the thirty three
(22:30):
different bits. That's two to the power of thirty three.
If you work that out, that ends up being more
than eight billion. Two to the thirty third powers more
than eight billion. There are seven billion people on Earth. Wait,
we've got made up people in this. It means that
we have more than enough information to to account for
the seven billion people who are actually alive. So, uh,
(22:53):
if you the idea is that with those thirty three bits,
you can then have enough personal identifiable information to narrow
it down to a specific individual. And also, it's devilishly
easy to forget that what you're putting out on the
internet personally identifies you, right say, all sorts of things
(23:14):
that they imagine are innocuous. I mean, Twitter is in
the Congressional Library. Now, yeah, you can get an entire
you can download an entire Twitter history, which is for
some of us quite a large file. As it turns out.
I think I have more than seventeen dozen tweets. So, um,
I clearly am not as as worried about anonymity as
(23:35):
some people are. Perhaps that is a foolish thing on
my part, but uh, there's an interesting example of this
as well. Researchers at Stanford and the University of Texas.
We're able to identify Netflix viewers based upon their activity,
and part of that was because these are the same.
These viewers would do things like leave reviews for movies
(23:57):
on other sites and just by looking at the stuff
that you wouldn't think would personally identify you, right, because
it's just it's just you your opinion about a movie.
It's not hey, I happened to be five foot whatever.
I'm not telling you. Yeah, but they But the point
being then is that there's uh, there, there's some puzzle
(24:19):
solving that can happen very easily, right because they say, oh, um,
anonymous user A watch this thing on Netflix at this time,
and then oh surprise, shortly thereafter, anonymous user oh wait,
it's anonymous user A. And they said that this was
they gave it three stars, and what they did on
(24:40):
Netflix like like this, this anonymous user A watched a
uh particular movie at a particular time. This other person
whose identity we know, left a review on IMDb, and
based upon the time between these two events, were reasonably
certain that anonymous user A is this person we know.
An anonymous user A is completely wrong about Big Trouble
(25:02):
a Little Chine, which is an amazing movie. It is not.
It is not a good bad movie. It is a
good good movie because he's the sidekick the whole time.
You got pork Shop Express. Come on, So what is
the Tour project about? You guys have done a you
guys done a podcast on this. Um, Matt and I
have done some videos, but we've never done a full
(25:24):
podcast on it. So it's tour you know, kind of
stands for the Onion Router. It's really its own name now,
it's just tour sure. Originally the Onion Router was based
on the idea that, um, it's encrypting things in layers, yes,
so that you would go, uh, an information from point
A to point Z, let's say, would go through all
these different layers, and between each layer things would get
(25:46):
encrypted in a different way. So from layer one to
layer two it would get encrypted layer two to layer three,
it would get encrypted layer three to layer forward get
a different level of encryption, and and furthermore, each each layer,
each node in this connection only knows the node before
it and after it, which is key. It doesn't know
the entire chain exactly. So the idea of being that
(26:08):
this node, this series of nodes makes a circuit. That
circuit is connecting your computer running a tour browser to
whatever site or whatever information you were trying to retrieve.
But that circuit of nodes has very limited information in
any individual piece of the overall circuit. Right, So if
(26:31):
you identified that there's one node in this network, and
you see that information is coming from uh, the node
immediately preceding it, and it's going to the node following it,
you wouldn't be able to reconstruct the rest of the circuit.
That's all the information you would be able to get.
So if there are like six nodes in this circuit
and you've identified node number three, you can only see
(26:54):
that information is coming from node two and it's going
to node four. You wouldn't be able to see where
node one, five, or six, where those are in that circuit. Yeah,
you wouldn't be able to see the original sender or
the intended receiver, and hopefully if it's encrypted well enough,
you wouldn't be able to read the message either exactly,
because again it gets encrypted between each node in that circuit. Uh,
it sounds pretty secure, right, Yeah, it sounds it sounds
(27:17):
pretty cool. What could possibly go wrong? Well, as it
turns out, there are ways to try and figure out
who is trying to access what so So in this
world where you're looking at all these connections that get
hidden because it's traveling through all these nodes, you might
be able to see all the potential start points and
(27:39):
all the potential end points, but you don't really know
which people are trying to access which sites or which servers. However,
if you were to be able to analyze all the
traffic across the network and build enough of a statistical model,
you could start weeding people out and start looking at
the potential people going to the potential end points, play
(28:02):
the something like the target game. You could use big
data to uh analyze and then maybe even predict. Yeah.
So essentially what you're this is really oversimplifying it. But
essentially you might see that, uh that let's say person A,
the anonymous A is trying to access Silk Road, all right,
(28:22):
and so you see an anonymous person's a's connection light up.
It then goes across these nodes which mix everything else up,
and you are already looking at Silk Road, so you
are specifically you've already identified the potential target and the
potential destination. And then you see that the silk Road
(28:43):
one lights up in the amount of time you would
expect for this message to have to transfer across these modes.
Then you'd say, uh, this is a potential hit. And
then you continue to analyze traffic. This can actually help
d H and animonize I can't even say it. How
do we thank you anemone D anemone the network? So
(29:08):
but you know, it really is this is a potential
way where you can figure out at least which connection
was trying to connect to which server. Uh, And it
just it steps back from the actual circuit entirely. And
it may not be enough to move on a person
you know with full legal backing, but it might be
enough to convince you to really look into that person
(29:29):
more closely. So there's really no safe harbor for complete
anonymity on tour because if somebody wants to find you
or if they want to find find the needle in
the haystack, with enough diligence, they can well, I mean
it would it's at least possible for them to for
(29:52):
for someone really determined and with the right resources to
be able to start narrowing things down right, Uh, certainly,
And there there are few other problems with with tour.
I mean, it's an open source thing. That's part of
the way that the system actually protects itself and a
kind of anti logical. It might encounterintuitive, but it really
(30:12):
is because it means that anyone can can go in
and look at this. So if someone changes something or
someone puts in a change, this is a community that's
looking after the whole the whole product. So it's not
something that would be easy to slip in without anyone
taking notice of it. Also, its origins kind of raise
(30:33):
some eyebrows to Yes, the origin from naval research, right, Yeah, well,
I mean, as it turns out, Uh, there are reasons why,
say a military organization would want to be able to
send information uh secretly or perhaps access information in secret
and even within itself, yeah, even without itself, even even
(30:54):
apart from other organizations within that same government. Uh. When
we talk about the n s A, there are their
government organizations that are equally upset as they quite a
few that, like you know, you know, there are citizens
who are up and up up all about this. I mean,
they're very upset about it, as I think they should be. Um,
that's my own personal opinion. But there are government organizations
(31:19):
they're they're working for the same people who are equally upset.
Their wheels within wheels would be the X files line.
I mean, you've got those, You've got those great rivalries
between the CIA and n s A that date back
to the the beginning of both organizations. And recently, as
we're recording this, more and more information about what we
(31:41):
would call friendly fire surveillance has leaked people who had
not only the wherewithal, but the motivation to keep their
communications private or anonymous. Like congres members of Congress found that, um,
not only was the n s A, but the FBI
as well, uh mono touring their monitoring their day to
(32:03):
day emails and phone calls, whatnot. The thing that was
was really important to underline here is that it's not
inherently sinister to serve the web anonymously. And it's possible
to do it, as we said an earlier thing, but
it's not really plausible and uh not for a long
term solution. No, No, it's once off and we uh
(32:26):
we do tell you, guys, listeners in UH and Jonathan
Lawns show, we show you how theoretically you could make
yourself if not impossible to trace, very very inconvenient to
do so. Right, But it's basically like like burner phone, burner,
internet connection, burner face like to go, yeah, you gotta
(32:49):
pretty much be uh. You have to really limit what
it is you want to do, and you have to
very much limit the way you do it. So in
other words, it's not like you can just use that
methodology to do everything you would want to do on
the web, because there's some cool stuff that's on the
web that I love to do that there's just no
way to do anonymously, not not truly right, Like can
(33:12):
you really have a full Corgy watching experience if you
can't log in and comment? That also is a reference
to the Text Stuff episode. You'll learn way more about
Corgy obsessions in that show. I think it's enthusiasm. I
don't think we've crossed the line into obsession. Yet we're
just let me close out a couple of tabs. So
(33:34):
while Jonathan's closing out a couple of tabs, I do
just want to set you guys up for one more
big question. UM. If you if you like our show
stuff they want you to know listeners, then then you'll
love tech stuff because they have also been talking about
several different revelations, um, both both with security and the
nuts and bolts about how these kind of things work.
(33:56):
So we highly recommend their show. And I have to
ask you guys, since you're the ones with to know how, UM,
if you had to guess or speculate, do you think
that there would be more news forthcoming like the whole
Snowden disclosure thing where he said, you know, he kicked
down the door of the news organizations and said this
(34:16):
buying on everybody. Is there anything else that would happen,
because it seems like that's the big well, I mean,
we only know what we know, right there's there's you
can bet a couple of things. You can bet that
anything that has happened since Snowdon has left is largely
(34:37):
unknown to us because he was the source of the leak.
So anything that has been done to address that or
change things, evolve the technologies that's being used, or or
to find tune them in different ways, or even apply
them and even more broad applications, or to fine tune
the process by which they make sure that other people
don't link their information. Yeah, all of that is unknown
(34:58):
to us, so we can't really be sure what's going on.
What we do know is just based upon the information
that's been revealed so far. There already have been abuses
of the system. So that's the other thing to keep
in mind. Even if somehow you could agree that the
n s A system is on its own, maybe you
could call it flawed, but it mostly works. Let's say
(35:18):
that you even make that assumption. The problem is it's
run by people, and people, as it turns out, our
flawed very much so, and some people will take advantage
of having the opportunity to use such a powerful tool
to do things like snoop on X girlfriends. Yeah, and
even if someone isn't doing it nefariously, there there could
(35:39):
certainly be mistakes made. Yeah. So, so there are a
lot of issues that will probably come to light as
we get more people investigating this um. The interesting thing
to me is really seeing how much movement we see
in political circles to actually address this in a meaningful way,
because you do have lots of people, You have lots
(36:00):
of representatives who are at least saying that they want more, more,
more transparency because their constituents are demanding it. Right. Yeah,
well they're they're kind of demanding it too. I mean
it sounds like, yeah, once they found out that the
ad but uh there. That's one of the big debates
(36:21):
always is uh is it a matter of sincere offense
or fashionable offense fashionable indignation? And and that's something that
I think we will see in the future with our listeners.
We'd like to we'd like to hear from you guys
as well. What do you think the next big revelations
(36:43):
about the internet would be? Um? Oh, and here's one. Uh,
can you or have you served the web anonymously? Let's
see if you could write in and let us know
and still stay anonymous. I don't know, let's just see
if it works. Uh. In the meantime, I'd like to
thank Jonathan and Lauren you guys, thank you so much
(37:04):
for coming on our show. Um, I wish I knew
what had happened to Matt. We haven't really said it
on air, but you want to go ahead, and I
actually I can reveal at this point that Matt in
fact was buried under a pile of corky puppies and
he's he's all right, but he's penned and cannot move.
(37:24):
He's the happiest that he has ever been. He is stuck.
He has been saying that I cannot breathe and that's okay, uh,
in various languages. It's weird. He actually is really fluent,
but only in that one phrase. Yeah, he's really smart,
but it's strange that he only knows that phrase. So, um,
I guess maybe I'll go try to find him and
(37:47):
get him out because we still need him for the show. Yeah,
he's got some stuff he needs to edit to and uh.
And honestly, those puppies are starting to get tired and
he just keeps on picking up the ones that are
wearing a nap and putting him back on his stomach.
So so there's okay, I know the pile of puppies
you were talking about. Okay, No, he's under there, the
third pile. Yes, yeah, okay, great, um as I said, guys,
(38:13):
want to thank you so much for coming on the
show and being our very first guest. I'd also like
to let listeners know that if you like this show,
as you said, you'll enjoy tech stuff. But these folks
aren't just on tech stuff. They are on another excellent
podcast called Forward Thinking that which is also a video series,
(38:33):
and you can see all three of us they think
at various points, participating in everyday science shananigans on a
show called brain Stuff. You can actually see all three
of us in in the episode about about product placement.
Oh boy, that one I forgot about that. Yeah, well,
if you want to see why they're laughing at me,
(38:54):
you can check that one out to Uh. You can
find stuff they don't want you to know. Dot com
for video and every podcast we've ever made, and of
course we're all over the internet. You can drop us
a line with a suggestion or feedback on Twitter or Facebook.
That's where we put a lot of the stories that
don't make it into videos or podcasts. So do check
(39:14):
it out. And if you'd like to cut has the
social media rigormar rule entirely, just send us. Uh, just
send us an email at our address. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test two dot com slash
(39:35):
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. All right, Hello,
welcome to the show. If that intro by our super
producer Noel was familiar, then that means you are in
(00:23):
the right place. Ladies and gentlemen. This is stuff they
don't want you to know. I'm Ben. You're probably wondering
where Matt is. He is off on an adventure that
maybe we'll get to in the course of this show.
But in place of Matt, today we have not one,
but two very special guests from tech Stuff, from brain Stuff,
(00:47):
from Forward Thinking. I don't even know how you guys
found time to come on this show, Jonathan Strickland and
Lauren vogelbaumb We found time because we literally just recorded
another Tech Stuff episode with you, like like ten minutes ago.
Thanks for not giving away our time travel scheme. That
was good. I'm glad that we have got that out
(01:08):
of the bag out of the bag Man, which is
only gonna be funny if you listen to the other episode, right,
because this is a sequel that's a compacit a sister episode.
It is. It is now. You guys were kind enough
or add poor enough taste to have me on your
show just a few minutes ago when we recorded a
(01:28):
great episode on how to serve the Web anonymously or
whether it's even possible. And this was us to something
that we thought was right up the stuff they don't
want you to know, Ali, because listeners out there, now,
you guys know as well as everybody else does now
(01:48):
that it turns out the United States government in particular
was putting a lot more energy into tracking people than
we had all thought. Yeah, I mean, even if you
take it at face value, where you know you have
this this system specifically the n s A we're talking
about here, with the prison specifically with yes, that if
even if you take it at face value, that what
(02:10):
they were looking for were foreign agents. So if you
are a United States citizen, then in theory you would
not a United States citizen who is not involved in
one of these schemes, You would not be considered a
foreign agent and therefore not part of the surveillance. Even
if you take that at face value, they would look
(02:32):
for people who they did identify as foreign agents, and
the people that that those folks talked to, right, Yeah,
they played the Kevin Bacon game. Yeah. And if you've
ever played the Kevin Bacon game, you know that it
gets pretty easy to start linking two people you never
thought would have had a connection to each other together.
It doesn't really take that many levels of separation, right, Right.
(02:56):
And furthermore, they're really collecting information on everyone and sort
through it in order to find these specific people. But
the fact that they're collecting and storing this information about
all of us, it's creepy. It's problematic. So again, even
taken on face value, it's it's it's troublesome. And then
when you realize the actual methodology, it becomes downright concerning.
(03:19):
I mean it's not just that, oh, there's some issues
here from a technological perspective, the very methodology is problematic.
I think that's well said. So one of my first
questions for you guys before you really get into this is, uh,
if let's say twenty years ago, if someone had come
up to you in and said the government is watching
(03:43):
everything and it's just going to watch more, would you
have would you have thought it was sort of conspiracy
bunk or would you have thought there was a possibility
of it happening, I would have thought bunk for sure. Yeah,
and it's and it's largely because uh well, I mean
ninety four wasn't there at Yeah. When you're talking about
(04:05):
how much data gets created or transferred or copied or
transmitted however you want to look at it, it's an
astronomical number. It is an enormous number. Just let's just
take YouTube as the example of data creation. Okay, so
on YouTube, every single minute that passes, more than a
(04:26):
hundred hours of video footage is being uploaded to YouTube.
Some of that's duplicate footage, but it doesn't really matter.
That's a huge amount of information. Now, just kind of extrapolate.
Imagine that the entire Internet, this network of computer networks,
is filled with people who are either creating information or
accessing it in some way. And the accessing of information
(04:48):
does in itself create a certain amount of meta data.
There's information about who, who accessed what and when. This
is such an enormous amount that most of us would
think that being able to to capture it and filter
it and make any meaning of it would be a
gargentean task beyond our capabilities. But it is a gargentean task.
(05:09):
But it's not, as it turns out, beyond our capability exactly.
It turns out that our our technology is sufficiently sophisticated
enough to be able to weed through that kind of stuff,
or at least we're working very hard on it. I mean,
not the three of us at this table, but I'm
personally aware of well. And and Google is a perfect
example of how we should have really kind of re
(05:31):
evaluated this idea that it's just too big, right, because
Google has created a business that, or at least the
forward facing part of their business that that's the search engine.
You know, arguably you would say that the real business
is advertising, but but the search engine is the thing,
the product that we're all familiar with, and it's really
really good. It's a really good search engine if you're
(05:53):
trying to find something specific. And once we realize how
much information is out there and how Google has developed
an algorithm that can effectively find the stuff you actually
want to see, then you start to realize, oh, I
guess it really is possible to build in that a
similar kind of tool that could be useful if you're
(06:14):
looking for signs of activity. Uh, if you happen to
be an enormous government organization that is in charge of
discovering cryptic messages set between foreign agents that could potentially
affect your country, or friends of foreign agents, yes, or
people who know friends of foreign agents. Yes. That's the
problem is that this this ripples outward. Right, if if
(06:36):
it were just the foreign agents, that becomes an issue
because then you have to be able to to reliably
identify a foreign agent versus someone who is not a
foreign agent. But then if you go one ripple outward,
who are these people talking to and why? Well, I
can understand why you would be interested in that, but
they're going to be people in that that one ripple
outward who are not in any way connected with anything nefarious,
(06:58):
but they're going to get swept up in that surveillance. Anyway,
if you go a further ring out, go for it.
That's an enormous number of people. This is what Facebook
is completely built upon, the whole idea of that social network.
If you ever see any of their presentations, you just
see how this this this one small group of people
(07:19):
who have these interconnections between each other become this enormous
mass of people. When you just go out a couple
of steps. Yet now this I'm glad that we're talking
about this because this is something that escapes a lot
of people that the uh, the government agency, the n
s A has automated the collection and analysis of this
(07:43):
of this stuff for people who are concerned. You know,
the n s A is listening in on my phone
calls and reading my emails. They're taking your phone calls
and emails and they're keeping them like like you said, Lauren,
And what they'll do is if you pop up on
a different algorhythm, than they'll actually have a human. Like
any other big organization from a call center to the FBI,
(08:04):
it's kind of difficult to actually get to a human.
You have to go through a few steps. Yeah, dial one,
wait for stuff. You listen to a robot voice and
I hate it, just a side note, I hate it
when the the automated line won't let you just push
a button and you have to stand there wherever you
are and look really stupid and go operator operate. Yes, yes, yes, yea,
(08:30):
And everybody's so solemn. We all just said the same yes.
But um. But but moving from this, we before we
go too deep on the government, we should make a
point that they're not the only people looking at web
activity when we talk about yeah, I mean, companies obviously
are looking at a lot of web activity as well,
(08:51):
for multiple reasons. Uh. Mostly companies are looking at activity
in order to make more money, all right. They want
to be able to sell you stuff better, or to
sell you as a consumer to an advertising company so
that that advertising company can tell you stuff better. Yeah. Yeah,
it all comes down to, you know, where are the dollars,
where are they coming from, and where are they going to?
And so we the users end up playing a big
(09:14):
role in that. I mean we we are the ones
who generate revenue for companies. And you know, if it
weren't that way, the Internet would be a very different place.
For one thing, it would not be nearly as robust
as it is, right, it would it would be mainly
limited to communication lines between things like research institutes and
the government, which, big surprise, that's what originally the Internet
(09:36):
was all about. Our yeah, our ponnett was essentially connections
between scientific research institutes, universities, and government installations. And that
was it, and and that was because you know, that
was what it was built for, was built to be
this really fast communications and networking ability so that people
could share things very effectively. What it's grown into is
(10:00):
this crazy world that melds things like entertainment and commerce
and communications all into one big package, which in many
ways is legitimately awesome. Obviously, we wouldn't have jobs if
there were an internet, or at least we wouldn't have
these jobs we are on the internet right now. Yeah, well,
you guys get paid. I'm here for community service. Your
(10:23):
internship has lasted longer than any other I've ever seen.
That's true. Hey, will you sign off for my hours
before this is? Thanks guys. UM. One question, though, that
a lot of people will have is the following. Just
a little bit of background here. UM, The question is
is surfing anonymously legal? Uh? The background here is that
(10:47):
often the desire to surf anonymously is depicted as one
that is inherently sinister. That is the same sort of
uh perception that is given two things is like torrents
now or peer to peer networks. Peer to peer networks
as they are by themselves, are not sinister or shady
(11:09):
or illegal, right ap. Peer to peer network is just
a means of distribution of files right, But when you
start distributing files that you don't have the right to
distribute network, that's where the illegal activity comes, and then
you end up sort of casting this shadow across the
entire technology. So there are companies like music and movie
companies that just say peer to peer networks alone are
(11:33):
bad because those are a lot of the ways that
that illegal file sharing got spread around, you know, just
a few years ago. Now it's not even that big
of a deal because you can get pretty much everything
in a billion different places. But uh, you know, if
you're talking about just trying to serve anonymously, it all
depends upon where you are in the world. In the
(11:55):
United States, it's not a big deal. There's no law
that you'd be very king by trying to hide your
IP address. The laws that you would be breaking would
be if you tried to do anything illegal while you
were doing that, or even if you weren't, whether or
not you're trying to hide what you're doing. If you're
doing something illegal, that's against the law, right, Yeah, Like
like you like you don't have to use tour to
(12:17):
buy drugs. There are many other reasons that you can
use tor Yeah, but if you do buy drugs. That's
against the law, and then if you're caught, you could
be punished for it, or you will be if you're caught.
I see. Yeah. So so here in the West and
the United States, Canada and so on, there is not
a law against uh surfing the web anonymously. I don't
(12:38):
I don't think it's even against the law to uh
go into some of the deep web stuff to which
we alluded um, which you guys have covered in a
previous episode and Matt and I have covered as well.
We're talking about this Silk Road and and not the
historic one through Central Asia. But as you said, other
countries have different perspectives, like you've got a great example
(12:59):
about China. Sure, yeah, China. They have a program in
China that is called the Golden Shield Project, also more
commonly known as the Great Firewall of China. UH. And
the reason for this is that it said effort i'll
um on part of the Chinese government to censor and
and have surveillance over Internet activities within China, so that
(13:22):
the main purpose of it is to prevent objectionable material
as defined by the Chinese government from getting to Chinese
citizens using the internet. So flat out block some websites
and some search terms and like some yeah things like Facebook.
You can't access Facebook in China using if you were
just trying to connect to a Chinese I s P
(13:44):
and go through methods domain name server. So if you
were to if you were to just use like plug
and play, you're you're just trying to use your browser
to get to certain places. You would find out that
there's some websites you just cannot access that way in China.
In order to access those websites, you have to circumvent
the protections that have been put in place. UH. In general,
(14:08):
this is not seen as a huge deal, right, It's
it's it's it's frowned upon. You're not supposed to do it.
But as far as I am aware, no one has
been UH persecuted and or prosecuted for trying to circumnavigate
the firewall of China. However, if you were to do
something such as post messages that are anti Chinese government
(14:33):
to websites, then that is very much considered against the law,
and you will they will look for you, and if
they find you and catch you, they will punish you. Right,
and it might also be used as perhaps a pretext
for arresting someone, at least in that country, kind of
the same way the tax evasion was the crime for
(14:53):
which Capone was ultimately arrested. Yeah. That in some cases,
depending again upon what country you are in, uh, this
might be the the door that opens up so that
they can get you for what they really want you for.
Right And and when we say we're not especially picking
on China, oh, although I do have to say, there's
one really cool thing that that freaks me out a bit.
(15:16):
And if you are on just the regular you know,
the version of the inner State uh Internet in China.
Every so often these two cartoon police characters will pop
up on the screen just to let you know that
they're they're looking out for you, they're protecting you. They're
protecting and serving by making sure you're not doing anything wrong. Actually,
(15:37):
what they're doing is they're protecting you by making sure
all that terrible information that would flood flood your browser
if if it only had the chance, because they know
you are an upstanding Chinese citizen and would never try
to access that kind of stuff. But that stuff is
trying to get it you no matter what. And those
cops they are making sure that you are going to
be safe from it. They also have blue eyes, which
(15:59):
is very weird. Their names of Chinging and Cha Cha.
It's based on a pun that means police in Chinese.
So check check it out and google it if you
have a chance. Just remember that China will know you
looked at it. And uh so earlier, Um, we we
mentioned toward the onion router, right, and uh what I
(16:20):
wanted to ask about is if you could, because you
guys are the experts here on technical matters, if you
could outline briefly for our listeners, what's the difference between
like a privacy mode on a browser and something like tour.
That's a great question. Yeah, in brief, a privacy browser
(16:41):
on your home computer does absolutely nothing to to protect
what you are doing from anyone aside from someone who
is looking purely at your home computer. Yeah, exactly, the
text mat real quick. While you're doing that, I'll continue
to explain. So, yeah, the privacy mode, what it's doing
is it's preventing stuff that would normally show up and say,
(17:02):
your search history, your browsing history cookies, is preventing all
that kind of stuff from happening so that someone who
gets access to your machine. Can't just look and see
what it is you've been up to. However, anyone who
can see the traffic that's going across your local network
that includes perhaps other machines that are also on the
local network, your router, the modem, your I s P,
(17:25):
all of these entities know exactly what you're doing because
in order for you to get the stuff you're trying
to get, they these entities have to know where to
send it, right right, This is so you know, up
to and including the website that you're accessing, they know
who you are as well, right, Yeah, at least they
know the I P edge, yes, and they know they
know what network it's going to. So really it's it's
(17:47):
you know, you can't hide your IP address perfectly because
if you did, no information would ever come back to
your computer. Now we, uh, we do have an interesting
fact here, and by interesting I mean disturbing. So I'll
just go ahead and ask how much information does someone
a company or a government or whomever need about you
(18:09):
before they can figure out who you are? All right?
This is a kind of fascinating. Did you ever hear
the story about how Target had identified a customer as
being pregnant. It was It turned out to be a
young lady, teenager, and so Target pregnant people are ladies,
(18:29):
that that would be true. That is true, Lauren, thank
you is a good point. A young lady pregnant, Uh,
Harris don't know. Parents don't know, parents don't know. She
has not told them. Uh. And Target starts proactively sending
her offers for things that a pregnant lady wouldn't possibly need.
(18:50):
And her father found the offers and got very upset,
saying like, why is Target sending this unsolit solicited stuff?
What do you what are you saying about? My daughter?
Raised a big fuss about it. You have offended mod dignity.
That's how I pickture him speaking. Yes, it was a
Southern gentleman from the fun city of Savannah there with
(19:12):
a white glove and just slapped the front door. Yeah.
Challenge you, I challenge your entire organization to Yeah. No,
that's not exactly what happened. But he did raise a
fuss and then later wrote a second a follow up
message saying I had a talk with my daughter. It
turns out that I did not. I was not aware
that she was pregnant. But this raised the point of
(19:34):
how did target know? What was it that gave target
the information? How did they predict this? And as it
turned out, it had the company had been watching her
purchase patterns and determined that statistically speaking, she was very
likely pregnant. And so this is an illustration that you
don't have to have actively shared some information about yourself
(19:57):
for an entity or a per son to draw conclusions
about at least your what your physical state is, or
what your your state of mind might be. Even if
it's not your specific name and identity, it could be
enough to be able to single out who you are
from a level that's separate from my name is Jonathan
(20:19):
Strickland and I live in Atlanta, Right, That actually would
be very easy. They're probably very few Joan Strickland's living
in Atlanta. There might be a few, because you know,
there are a lot of other Jonathan Strickland's. Lauren vocal
Bam might be the easiest to paying directly to zoom
in pretty quickly. So the real answer to this question,
(20:41):
according to research specialists, is that thirty three bits of
information called bits of entropy, and this in this identification
business are required in order to narrow it down to
a specific person out of all the people on Earth.
And and these these bits of information can be anything
from from your gender to the type of car you drive,
(21:04):
to your zip code to like, like, it doesn't have
to be the same thirty three bits in order, it
could be any thirty three bits, and bit in this
case means something specific. Like like in the computer world
we talk about digital Uh, you know these binary digits.
That that's what a bit is. It's either a zero
or a one, which you could think of as either
(21:25):
a no or yes. Well, uh, some bits, some pieces
of information represent a single bit, like gender is considered
to be a single bit, putting gender discussions aside. For
for many people, this would be male or female. All right,
that that obviously oversimplifies things, but for the purposes for identification,
(21:47):
male female tends to be uh. The way that they
look at it, very black and white kind of approach.
That represents one bit. Something like your zip code might
be several bits of information that would make up just
one zip code, but all it takes is thirty three bits.
Some of those bits might be connected to a larger concept,
(22:08):
like your model of car, uh, the specific region you
live in, whatever it is your age. That's another good one.
But all you need are thirty three bits worth of
this information to be able to identify. And the reason
for that is you take this yes or no. That's
a base of two, right, You've you've got two options.
You take that too, then you have the thirty three
(22:30):
different bits. That's two to the power of thirty three.
If you work that out, that ends up being more
than eight billion. Two to the thirty third powers more
than eight billion. There are seven billion people on Earth. Wait,
we've got made up people in this. It means that
we have more than enough information to to account for
the seven billion people who are actually alive. So, uh,
(22:53):
if you the idea is that with those thirty three bits,
you can then have enough personal identifiable information to narrow
it down to a specific individual. And also, it's devilishly
easy to forget that what you're putting out on the
internet personally identifies you, right say, all sorts of things
(23:14):
that they imagine are innocuous. I mean, Twitter is in
the Congressional Library. Now, yeah, you can get an entire
you can download an entire Twitter history, which is for
some of us quite a large file. As it turns out.
I think I have more than seventeen dozen tweets. So, um,
I clearly am not as as worried about anonymity as
(23:35):
some people are. Perhaps that is a foolish thing on
my part, but uh, there's an interesting example of this
as well. Researchers at Stanford and the University of Texas.
We're able to identify Netflix viewers based upon their activity,
and part of that was because these are the same.
These viewers would do things like leave reviews for movies
(23:57):
on other sites and just by looking at the stuff
that you wouldn't think would personally identify you, right, because
it's just it's just you your opinion about a movie.
It's not hey, I happened to be five foot whatever.
I'm not telling you. Yeah, but they But the point
being then is that there's uh, there, there's some puzzle
(24:19):
solving that can happen very easily, right because they say, oh, um,
anonymous user A watch this thing on Netflix at this time,
and then oh surprise, shortly thereafter, anonymous user oh wait,
it's anonymous user A. And they said that this was
they gave it three stars, and what they did on
(24:40):
Netflix like like this, this anonymous user A watched a
uh particular movie at a particular time. This other person
whose identity we know, left a review on IMDb, and
based upon the time between these two events, were reasonably
certain that anonymous user A is this person we know.
An anonymous user A is completely wrong about Big Trouble
(25:02):
a Little Chine, which is an amazing movie. It is not.
It is not a good bad movie. It is a
good good movie because he's the sidekick the whole time.
You got pork Shop Express. Come on, So what is
the Tour project about? You guys have done a you
guys done a podcast on this. Um, Matt and I
have done some videos, but we've never done a full
(25:24):
podcast on it. So it's tour you know, kind of
stands for the Onion Router. It's really its own name now,
it's just tour sure. Originally the Onion Router was based
on the idea that, um, it's encrypting things in layers, yes,
so that you would go, uh, an information from point
A to point Z, let's say, would go through all
these different layers, and between each layer things would get
(25:46):
encrypted in a different way. So from layer one to
layer two it would get encrypted layer two to layer three,
it would get encrypted layer three to layer forward get
a different level of encryption, and and furthermore, each each layer,
each node in this connection only knows the node before
it and after it, which is key. It doesn't know
the entire chain exactly. So the idea of being that
(26:08):
this node, this series of nodes makes a circuit. That
circuit is connecting your computer running a tour browser to
whatever site or whatever information you were trying to retrieve.
But that circuit of nodes has very limited information in
any individual piece of the overall circuit. Right, So if
(26:31):
you identified that there's one node in this network, and
you see that information is coming from uh, the node
immediately preceding it, and it's going to the node following it,
you wouldn't be able to reconstruct the rest of the circuit.
That's all the information you would be able to get.
So if there are like six nodes in this circuit
and you've identified node number three, you can only see
(26:54):
that information is coming from node two and it's going
to node four. You wouldn't be able to see where
node one, five, or six, where those are in that circuit. Yeah,
you wouldn't be able to see the original sender or
the intended receiver, and hopefully if it's encrypted well enough,
you wouldn't be able to read the message either exactly,
because again it gets encrypted between each node in that circuit. Uh,
it sounds pretty secure, right, Yeah, it sounds it sounds
(27:17):
pretty cool. What could possibly go wrong? Well, as it
turns out, there are ways to try and figure out
who is trying to access what so So in this
world where you're looking at all these connections that get
hidden because it's traveling through all these nodes, you might
be able to see all the potential start points and
(27:39):
all the potential end points, but you don't really know
which people are trying to access which sites or which servers. However,
if you were to be able to analyze all the
traffic across the network and build enough of a statistical model,
you could start weeding people out and start looking at
the potential people going to the potential end points, play
(28:02):
the something like the target game. You could use big
data to uh analyze and then maybe even predict. Yeah.
So essentially what you're this is really oversimplifying it. But
essentially you might see that, uh that let's say person A,
the anonymous A is trying to access Silk Road, all right,
(28:22):
and so you see an anonymous person's a's connection light up.
It then goes across these nodes which mix everything else up,
and you are already looking at Silk Road, so you
are specifically you've already identified the potential target and the
potential destination. And then you see that the silk Road
(28:43):
one lights up in the amount of time you would
expect for this message to have to transfer across these modes.
Then you'd say, uh, this is a potential hit. And
then you continue to analyze traffic. This can actually help
d H and animonize I can't even say it. How
do we thank you anemone D anemone the network? So
(29:08):
but you know, it really is this is a potential
way where you can figure out at least which connection
was trying to connect to which server. Uh, And it
just it steps back from the actual circuit entirely. And
it may not be enough to move on a person
you know with full legal backing, but it might be
enough to convince you to really look into that person
(29:29):
more closely. So there's really no safe harbor for complete
anonymity on tour because if somebody wants to find you
or if they want to find find the needle in
the haystack, with enough diligence, they can well, I mean
it would it's at least possible for them to for
(29:52):
for someone really determined and with the right resources to
be able to start narrowing things down right, Uh, certainly,
And there there are few other problems with with tour.
I mean, it's an open source thing. That's part of
the way that the system actually protects itself and a
kind of anti logical. It might encounterintuitive, but it really
(30:12):
is because it means that anyone can can go in
and look at this. So if someone changes something or
someone puts in a change, this is a community that's
looking after the whole the whole product. So it's not
something that would be easy to slip in without anyone
taking notice of it. Also, its origins kind of raise
(30:33):
some eyebrows to Yes, the origin from naval research, right, Yeah, well,
I mean, as it turns out, Uh, there are reasons why,
say a military organization would want to be able to
send information uh secretly or perhaps access information in secret
and even within itself, yeah, even without itself, even even
(30:54):
apart from other organizations within that same government. Uh. When
we talk about the n s A, there are their
government organizations that are equally upset as they quite a
few that, like you know, you know, there are citizens
who are up and up up all about this. I mean,
they're very upset about it, as I think they should be. Um,
that's my own personal opinion. But there are government organizations
(31:19):
they're they're working for the same people who are equally upset.
Their wheels within wheels would be the X files line.
I mean, you've got those, You've got those great rivalries
between the CIA and n s A that date back
to the the beginning of both organizations. And recently, as
we're recording this, more and more information about what we
(31:41):
would call friendly fire surveillance has leaked people who had
not only the wherewithal, but the motivation to keep their
communications private or anonymous. Like congres members of Congress found that, um,
not only was the n s A, but the FBI
as well, uh mono touring their monitoring their day to
(32:03):
day emails and phone calls, whatnot. The thing that was
was really important to underline here is that it's not
inherently sinister to serve the web anonymously. And it's possible
to do it, as we said an earlier thing, but
it's not really plausible and uh not for a long
term solution. No, No, it's once off and we uh
(32:26):
we do tell you, guys, listeners in UH and Jonathan
Lawns show, we show you how theoretically you could make
yourself if not impossible to trace, very very inconvenient to
do so. Right, But it's basically like like burner phone, burner,
internet connection, burner face like to go, yeah, you gotta
(32:49):
pretty much be uh. You have to really limit what
it is you want to do, and you have to
very much limit the way you do it. So in
other words, it's not like you can just use that
methodology to do everything you would want to do on
the web, because there's some cool stuff that's on the
web that I love to do that there's just no
way to do anonymously, not not truly right, Like can
(33:12):
you really have a full Corgy watching experience if you
can't log in and comment? That also is a reference
to the Text Stuff episode. You'll learn way more about
Corgy obsessions in that show. I think it's enthusiasm. I
don't think we've crossed the line into obsession. Yet we're
just let me close out a couple of tabs. So
(33:34):
while Jonathan's closing out a couple of tabs, I do
just want to set you guys up for one more
big question. UM. If you if you like our show
stuff they want you to know listeners, then then you'll
love tech stuff because they have also been talking about
several different revelations, um, both both with security and the
nuts and bolts about how these kind of things work.
(33:56):
So we highly recommend their show. And I have to
ask you guys, since you're the ones with to know how, UM,
if you had to guess or speculate, do you think
that there would be more news forthcoming like the whole
Snowden disclosure thing where he said, you know, he kicked
down the door of the news organizations and said this
(34:16):
buying on everybody. Is there anything else that would happen,
because it seems like that's the big well, I mean,
we only know what we know, right there's there's you
can bet a couple of things. You can bet that
anything that has happened since Snowdon has left is largely
(34:37):
unknown to us because he was the source of the leak.
So anything that has been done to address that or
change things, evolve the technologies that's being used, or or
to find tune them in different ways, or even apply
them and even more broad applications, or to fine tune
the process by which they make sure that other people
don't link their information. Yeah, all of that is unknown
(34:58):
to us, so we can't really be sure what's going on.
What we do know is just based upon the information
that's been revealed so far. There already have been abuses
of the system. So that's the other thing to keep
in mind. Even if somehow you could agree that the
n s A system is on its own, maybe you
could call it flawed, but it mostly works. Let's say
(35:18):
that you even make that assumption. The problem is it's
run by people, and people, as it turns out, our
flawed very much so, and some people will take advantage
of having the opportunity to use such a powerful tool
to do things like snoop on X girlfriends. Yeah, and
even if someone isn't doing it nefariously, there there could
(35:39):
certainly be mistakes made. Yeah. So, so there are a
lot of issues that will probably come to light as
we get more people investigating this um. The interesting thing
to me is really seeing how much movement we see
in political circles to actually address this in a meaningful way,
because you do have lots of people, You have lots
(36:00):
of representatives who are at least saying that they want more, more,
more transparency because their constituents are demanding it. Right. Yeah,
well they're they're kind of demanding it too. I mean
it sounds like, yeah, once they found out that the
ad but uh there. That's one of the big debates
(36:21):
always is uh is it a matter of sincere offense
or fashionable offense fashionable indignation? And and that's something that
I think we will see in the future with our listeners.
We'd like to we'd like to hear from you guys
as well. What do you think the next big revelations
(36:43):
about the internet would be? Um? Oh, and here's one. Uh,
can you or have you served the web anonymously? Let's
see if you could write in and let us know
and still stay anonymous. I don't know, let's just see
if it works. Uh. In the meantime, I'd like to
thank Jonathan and Lauren you guys, thank you so much
(37:04):
for coming on our show. Um, I wish I knew
what had happened to Matt. We haven't really said it
on air, but you want to go ahead, and I
actually I can reveal at this point that Matt in
fact was buried under a pile of corky puppies and
he's he's all right, but he's penned and cannot move.
(37:24):
He's the happiest that he has ever been. He is stuck.
He has been saying that I cannot breathe and that's okay, uh,
in various languages. It's weird. He actually is really fluent,
but only in that one phrase. Yeah, he's really smart,
but it's strange that he only knows that phrase. So, um,
I guess maybe I'll go try to find him and
(37:47):
get him out because we still need him for the show. Yeah,
he's got some stuff he needs to edit to and uh.
And honestly, those puppies are starting to get tired and
he just keeps on picking up the ones that are
wearing a nap and putting him back on his stomach.
So so there's okay, I know the pile of puppies
you were talking about. Okay, No, he's under there, the
third pile. Yes, yeah, okay, great, um as I said, guys,
(38:13):
want to thank you so much for coming on the
show and being our very first guest. I'd also like
to let listeners know that if you like this show,
as you said, you'll enjoy tech stuff. But these folks
aren't just on tech stuff. They are on another excellent
podcast called Forward Thinking that which is also a video series,
(38:33):
and you can see all three of us they think
at various points, participating in everyday science shananigans on a
show called brain Stuff. You can actually see all three
of us in in the episode about about product placement.
Oh boy, that one I forgot about that. Yeah, well,
if you want to see why they're laughing at me,
(38:54):
you can check that one out to Uh. You can
find stuff they don't want you to know. Dot com
for video and every podcast we've ever made, and of
course we're all over the internet. You can drop us
a line with a suggestion or feedback on Twitter or Facebook.
That's where we put a lot of the stories that
don't make it into videos or podcasts. So do check
(39:14):
it out. And if you'd like to cut has the
social media rigormar rule entirely, just send us. Uh, just
send us an email at our address. We are conspiracy
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit test two dot com slash
(39:35):
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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