Big Brother Wants Your Internet Passwords

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Big Brother is Watching You

A 1984 Orwellian State that is fully funded by

a Democrat Senate and a GOP House.

A search warrant?  How quaint.  So 18th century.  But the Constitution never stopped either party before in building a centralized Surveillance State.

What does a voter do when both parties are out to fuck you over?

Now it comes out that the U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back," reports Cnet News.

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

• A Microsoft spokesperson would not say whether the company has received such requests from the government. 
• Google also declined to disclose whether it had received requests for those types of data. 
• A Yahoo spokeswoman would not say whether the company had received such requests.

The FBI declined to comment.


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