Wikipedia will go ‘secure’ to beat NSA surveillance

[SRP]

NEW DELHI: Just days after reports revealed that National Security Agency (NSA) in the US actively looked at what people read on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation announced on its website that it would implement HTTPS for logged-in users.

The foundation, a non-profit organization, manages Wikipedia. The S in HTTPS stands for secure.

Two days ago, Guardian newspaper revealed that with the help of a tool called XKeyscore, NSA was monitoring web users who accessed Wikipedia, the world's 7th most popular website.

Wikimedia said that to start with, it would offer HTTPS connection to all logged-in users from August 21. It will then gradually roll-out HTTPS for all users as well as implement additional security measures to make it harder for governments to snoop on Wikipedia users. However, it did not specify any deadlines for the additional security measures.

Following the Guardian report, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, had revealed on Twitter that the website was planning to switch to HTTPS from HTTP but there were a few bugs that had delayed the process.

"Our current architecture cannot handle HTTPS by default, but we've been incrementally making changes to make it possible. Since we appear to be specifically targeted by XKeyscore, we'll be speeding up these efforts," Wikimedia said on its website.

On Friday Wales announced the Wikimedia decision and tweeted, "I challenge the rest of the industry to join us. Encryption is a human rights issue."

HTTPS is more secure compared to HTTP. Websites using HTTPS establish a secure connection between their servers and the user's computer and greatly minimize the privacy risk. The secure connection means that third parties like government agencies or internet service providers (ISPs) can not read the content of data that a website and its users exchange.

However, the government agencies, hackers and internet service providers can still collect this data and possibly read it if they can break the encryption.

Initially, only banks and other organizations mindful of cyber security risks used HTTPS. But gradually email service providers and e-commerce websites started using it on their login pages. Currently, popular websites like Google, Facebook and Twitter use HTTPS but the majority of websites, including big ones like Yahoo! still rely on HTTP.

Wikipedia will go ‘secure’ to beat NSA surveillance - The Times of India

 

[Manindra]

I think if NSA wants information then they simply twist their arms to get it, but what kind of information they would wanted from wikipedia?

 

[Yzd Khalifa]

I think if NSA wants information then they simply twist their arms to get it, but what kind of information they would wanted from wikipedia?

Intelligence gathering, counter terrorism, and US adversaries military-machine developments.

 

[Manindra]

Intelligence gathering, counter terrorism, and US adversaries military-machine developments.

Then they would simply give more on those websites who store personal information.

I am fed up with wikipedia because I am tired from altering false information posted by some fanboys.

These type of people wasting hard work of wikipedia team to providing knowledge of everything in one site.

 

[rubyjackass]

I think if NSA wants information then they simply twist their arms to get it, but what kind of information they would wanted from wikipedia?

It all comes to browsing habits. May be they assess a person's potential extremism by looking at the pages he visits. But it can obviously be used for anything by the guy who is in the room.

 

[Skies]

This NSA is the enemy of privacy but it's now human right, people should find alternative of using US servers and services, anyway, PDF should think for HTTPS for future/

 

[Yzd Khalifa]

Then they would simply give more on those websites who store personal information.

I am fed up with wikipedia because I am tired from altering false information posted by some fanboys.

These type of people wasting hard work of wikipedia team to providing knowledge of everything in one site.

Nearly each and every single bits and pieces of information on Wikipedia are linked to other sites as references, charters, and statistics. If the NSA catches up with Wikipedia, then it can trace all info by every nook and cranny.

 

[Skies]

July 31, 2013
Huge Global Coalition Stands Against Unchecked Surveillance
100+ Organizations Sign Thirteen Principles to Protect Human Rights


San Francisco - More than 100 organizations from across the globe – including Privacy International, Access, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – are taking a stand against unchecked communications surveillance, calling for the governments around the world to follow international human rights law and curtail pervasive spying.

The coalition of groups have all signed the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance – 13 basic principles that spell out how existing human rights law applies to modern digital surveillance. Written in response to the increasing number of government surveillance standards that focus on law enforcement and "national security" priorities instead of citizens' rights, the principles include advice on how surveillance laws should respect the law, due process, and include public oversight and transparency. Current debates over government surveillance are often limited by outmoded definitions of content versus metadata, or stored data versus data in transit. The principles released today concentrate on the core issue: how human rights protect all information that reveals private information about an individual's communications.

"It's time to restore human rights to their place at the very heart of the surveillance debate," said EFF International Director Danny O'Brien. "Widespread government spying on communications interferes with citizens' ability to enjoy a private life, and to freely express themselves – basic rights we all have. But the mass metadata collected in the U.S. surveillance program, for example, makes it extraordinarily easy for the government to track what groups we associate with and why we might contact them. These principles announced today represent a global consensus that modern surveillance has gone too far and must be restrained."

The organizations signing the principles come from more than 40 different countries. The principles will be used to advocate for a change in how present laws are interpreted, and new laws are crafted.

"International human rights law binds every country across the globe to a basic respect for freedom of expression and personal privacy," said EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rodriguez. "The pervasiveness of surveillance makes standing up for our digital rights more important than ever. And we need those rights to survive in a digital world, where any state can spy on us all, in more detail than ever before. We know that surveillance laws need to be transparent and proportionate, with judicial oversight, and that surveillance should only be used when absolutely necessary. Everything we've heard about the NSA programs indicate that they fall far outside these international human rights principles."

For the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance:
https://necessaryandproportionate.org/

For more on how the principles were developed:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/thirteen-principles-for-human-rights

 

[livingdead]

good job wikipedia.. today their founder argued against making pron as opt in for people of uk...
I donated 15 quid to wiki foundation in gratitude..

 

[Manindra]

It all comes to browsing habits. May be they assess a person's potential extremism by looking at the pages he visits. But it can obviously be used for anything by the guy who is in the room.

Then they simply track google or these type of search engine because most people search anything through search engines.

 

[Sniper_Lycan]

Oh come on, their softwares based on Artificial Intelligence are continuously monitoring the entire Internet. They know who is doing what and from where. Even they know that I have just posted this comment.