Saturday, June 8, 2013

PRISM and The Security

My Dear Friends,

                  In my earlier article about how to find stolen laptop I was deadly against using laptop tracker as the said software always tracks your laptop and most of the product company's servers are situated in US. So I suggested and requested all netizens  for not to use laptop tracker, the reason was big brother (US) is watching you means your location. How do they work, for knowing this you can use "Prey" as it is a freeware. There you will find how you have surrendered yourself in the hands of a company which is situated outside your country. Today now it is clear and established truth that what I guessed, it is a fact as President Obama confessed about his project PRISM, which is running since 2007.  

 It is question about Security, not Privacy to me: -

                           First of all I will request my friends to know details about PRISM. So please visit http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57588253-83/what-is-the-nsas-prism-program-faq/  for knowing details about it. Now everybody even you are also thinking that you are being monitored. But my brother you are not terrorist and you are not criminal and for that it does not matter who monitors you and what does it bother to you. At least I do not and if I learn that I am being monitored as I do not do crime.
                        
      But my point is something else. We are not discussing about our financial information passing through net. Who will give us this guarantee that those traffics are not monitored ? Now a question will come that those traffics are encrypted. Yes those are but when a government monitors network traffic secretly (state sponsored) is it not possible for knowing the algorithm of decryption ? Here comes the point of security. So who is secured a Government, the netizens or the e-commerce customers and the e-business houses ?

         If this is secured so there is no damage to the netizens of any country as a State has right to secure himself/herself from future attacks. But if this is not I think there will be a big hit to the e-commerce as a whole as only except COD (Cash on Delivery) everything is dangerous on net on the question of network traffic security. And only on the basis of COD the e-commerce market will not survive, as a result the globalisation of business will face a big damage. Now this will be a trend for every countries for following the Big Brother and who knows that other countries are not doing this. And if this monitoring process is outsourced then everything is available to all as from my personal experience I have seen the employee who is today here , he will tomorrow be there with the data from here.

      So its my question to all of you " Are we really secured ? ", 

Though today Facebook CEO declared that he did not know anything about PRISM and they maintain strong privacy policies for their users. Is it believable ? You are doing business in a country without obeying their legal order. Hope for the best and after all we will have to believe that till today good men are in the world.

Here is the declaration from FB in FB; -

"I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term."


With Thanks and  Best of Luck

Sujit