…because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law…
…VPNs might protect you against garden-variety criminals, but the intentional commingling of origin/destination points by VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept (and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will)…
Certainly the NSA isn’t concerned about “incidental collection.” It’s never been too concerned about its consistent “incidental” collection of US persons’ communications and data in the past and this isn’t going to budge the needle, especially since it means the NSA would have to do more work to filter out domestic communications and the FBI would be less than thrilled with any efforts made to deny it access to communications it doesn’t have the legal right to obtain on its own.
Since the government won’t do this, it’s up to the general public, starting with everyone sharing the contents of this letter with others. VPNs can still offer considerable security benefits. But everyone needs to know that domestic surveillance is one of the possible side effects of utilizing this tech.
Time to spread the free word of Tor to everyone.
Doesn’t that have the same problem?
Doesn’t tor have the same problem?
The word is appreciated, but a link would be better…
So, I am a remote worker in Healthcare. Obviously, I need to use a VPN to connect to work to ensure that communication is secure. But because I have a job that requires secure access, I am a suspected domestic terrorist?
Suspect or not, you get the same surveillance treatment as suspected domestic terrorists do.
Yes.
In contrast to not using a VPN, which subjects them to illegal surveillance already?
They have been surveiling us for years. They just to maximize what they can collect.
They’ve already collected your modal verb!
I’ve been pegged as one who serially modals online.
They spy on domestic communications too, with the 5 eyes arrangement, they have their allies scoop up the information and share it back with them, even as it’s just the US doing the entire thing with a couple of foreign names on the masthead. Fucking lawyers.
I don’t get it.
Why should a Russian spy have to tell Americans anything?
lol please tell me more. I’ve heard kooks like you are roaming around unmedicated?
VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept
Lol. Then they go and immediately say:
and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will
In other words, they don’t gaf about your sovereignty, and will monitor communications in any way they want, legally or otherwise.
They’ve been illegally digging into domestic communications for decades. Stallman and Snowden (to name a couple) exposed that a long time ago. Hell, the USA government exposes themselves all the time, the USA people just choose to ignore it.
Is it safe enough to use vpns based out of the US? I’m using nord which is non us.
Nord is owned by Tesonet, a data mining company which also owns SurfShark.
And Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN are owned by Kape, an Israeli firm.
ProtonVPN is owned by Proton, in Switzerland.
Mullvad is based in Sweden and is the main interest of its seemingly decent, also Swedish, parent company
Fan of Mullvad but just be aware its not what you want if you’re using a VPN for torrenting. They had to remove their port forwarding feature due to some bad actors ruining it for the rest of us.
What happens if you are torrenting via Mullvad?
You’ll only be able to connect to certain peers that do have port forwarding setup.
Only if you disable uTP protocol. Or if you have an ancient client that doesn’t support it
Shit I rarely make it above 1:1 even if I seed 24/7 for a while, I wonder if I need to work on my settings.
I torrent on Mullvad, it works but its often slow and I don’t connect to peers that say are available.
I run into that problem too on CyberGhost, I wonder if my settings are not fully optimized as I tried to go for security over openeness due to my limited knowledge… Sometimes a torrent will have up to 10 seeders but will still stall out / fail, I always thought that was due to those seeders having limited bandwidth and being queued up for hundreds of other downloads before they get to mine, but now I wonder if its my settings… Either way I would rather optimize for security, but I wish I could get some rare stuff sometimes that has few seeders.
Yeah, I’ve wondered the same thing about my settings. I’m certainly no expert so there may be something I’m doing wrong. It MOSTLY works though so I haven’t been hard pressed to dive into it.
Thanks for the extra digging, no true privacy but at least there’s some transparency with the vpns.
CyberGhost I believe is also owned by Kape or a subsidiary.
Those are the ones that would cause them to surveil you.
The issue isn’t necessarily “the government will target you for using a VPN;” the issue is “if your IP makes you look like you’re outside the US because that’s where your traffic exits the VPN, the laws against domestic spying won’t protect you properly because you’ll look like a foreigner.”
Frankly, the headline is heavily spinning it to be anti-VPN fearmongering.
Yeah I reacted way too quickly. Then I realized half of X bot traffic spoofs everywhere. They’re intentionally doing a shakeup of everything and this one got under my skin cause I’m a daily user.
But before this was that outside US router ban that was pretty real. The DJI ban. So these types of news cascade and its worrisome.
Privacy companies based outside the US can still have VPN servers within the US. That traffic would still look domestic. The company being owned and headquartered outside the US just gives them a bit more protection against the rogue US government.
Some VPNs also allow multi-hop, so that you can connect to one VPN server via another. That could make it harder for the spooks to see that your traffic is leaving the US. Of course it also means that they might suspect any traffic coming out of a VPN server even based in the US, which is basically the point of this article.
And some VPNs allow you to enable a feature that protects against AI-driven data traffic analysis. So that someone who’s really committed can’t just monitor the size and frequency of your outgoing encrypted packets, then find matching patterns in packets leaving the server you’re connected to, tracing it to the destination. Instead, the VPN adds noise and sends uniform packets so that AI can’t trace it from source to destination.
I don’t know if Nord offers these features, cause I don’t use Nord. But I’ve heard some issues about them, which other user’s have already mentioned and offered alternatives for, so I’ll leave it at that
Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t as precise as I could’ve been. I was really just trying to convey the motivations (i.e. that it was due to being mistaken for foreign as opposed to being targeted for using a VPN), not go into the details of exactly which aspect of the VPN (the entrance IP geolocation, the exit IP geolocation, or the company HQ location) would actually trigger the “foreign-ness.”
I mean, even a US-based VPN company could look foreign if they have servers outside the US, or even if they just allow multi-hop to third-party servers to/from outside the US.
Except then they’re even more vulnerable not only to subpoenas but also extrajudicial and unconstitutional raids, as some journalists have discovered, especially in deeply red states but not always…
No. They will see that you’re using a vpn.
They might decide to record your traffic and save it until it can be decrypted.
I use VPN because it actually speeds up my connection on cellular. My theory is the DNS servers that Verizon uses in my area are inefficient, to the point where I’ll get 1 Mbit down on Verizon, but 100 Mbit down connected to Proton VPN.
It has nothing to do with security, unless I’m in a coffee shop on WiFi.
Edit: here are my speeds on cellular, first without VPN, second while connected to a server in Los Angeles.
Tell me you don’t know how dns works without telling me.
As somebody who knows how DNS works, there are certainly cases where DNS servers causing a delayed response to requests will slow down the initial loading of sites. This would result in a layman thinking their wireless speed is “slow”
And how does this affect bandwidth, again?
Net Neutrality was repealed in the U.S. in 2017. ISPs including your mobile phone carrier are allowed to throttle your bandwidth based on the sites you visit. When you use a VPN an tunnel your DNS through it to servers not operated by your ISP, they don’t know which sites you’re visiting, so any automated throttling would not happen.
Hm yeah this one makes sense.
Guess I’m the asshole this time.
Can hardly blame you for failing to keep up with the breakneck pace in which the U.S. government has been assaulting our freedoms and privacy. Some new fresh hell every day an all.
Routing. Back in the day, Charter customers experienced horrible download speeds using Charter’s DNS servers.
Switching to Google’s would result in far more reliable network speeds.
Tell me you’re a dickhead without telling me you’re a dickhead.
Charter customers experienced horrible download speeds using Charter’s DNS servers.
How did that work? Are you saying that charters dns servers were sending traffic to completely different places?
Tried to google for this but found nothing so hard to understand the problem.
Why not just switch dns servers instead of getting a vpn?
Tell me you’re a dickhead without telling me you’re a dickhead.
Yeah fair. Got me there.
EDIT: other guy mentioned throttling, which is interesting. But changing dns servers doesn’t fix that.
Dunno about where Charter was routing. Just knew it was a common best practice for users in my town to manually set their DNS to Google.
Charter became Spectrum and since then this hasn’t been a need.
So far as cellular goes, I don’t think I can manage my IP settings on the phone as one would on Windows. I already use VPN if I travel or use public WiFi, and learned that, holy shit, my speeds are far better while connected than not. So I stay connected almost all the time. It’s counter intuitive, but I can’t argue with the results.
As a long time Charter/Spectrum customer (yay local monopolies) who’s toyed with my network a bit, I have heard about some of their network shenanigans, but they don’t seem to have hit my area. Guess I’m surprised it’d be defeated by something a simple as dns servers, and the MITM of it all if they’re redirecting traffic is terrifying, what with https and all.
I don’t think I can manage my IP settings on the phone as one would on Windows.
Certainly you can change your dns server on nearly any phone.
Hey, just so you know. Trying to hide from us “totally not spying on you” might force us to totally spy on you.
Technically true, you should choose your VPN provider carefully and not opt for the cheapest one right on.
In practice however, it’s safer than whatever surveillance US is trying to implement by forcing down US made routers.
In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law.
Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, have recommended that consumers use VPNs to protect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they’re seeking.
The letter was signed by members of the Democratic Party’s progressive flank: Senators Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, and Alex Padilla, along with Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Sara Jacobs.
There’s a saying in Poland: “Robić kurwę z logiki” Which simultaneously can be translated as “To make a whore out of logic” Or “To turn the logic into a whore”
Removed by mod
I don’t give a shit.
Come at me. I’m behind 7 firewalls.
I trust my billion-dollar a year law firm’s VPN to block out this nonsense; we’ve got clients who are way more worried about our security than the government sniffing around.
