NSA Labels Privacy-Centric Internet Users As Extremists

The NSA is not making any friends these days, and their latest statement on privacy-centric journalists is not helping matters much either. To be more precise, an investigation by the agency revealed how they are continuing to target the Tor network. Moreover, The Linux Journal is referred to as an “extremist forum”. Quite a strong sentiment, and possibly completely misguided as well.

Privacy-Centric People Are Extremists

If it were up to the NSA, no one in the world would have a right to privacy. To be more precise, the government agency is keeping close tabs on the Tor Project, as they feel it is a tool only used by terrorists and extremists. In this day and age of data breaches and government spying, projects such as Tor keep user information safe from prying eyes.

A new investigation by the NSA is raising a lot of questions, as they continue their surveillance of two particular Tor servers located in Germany. To make matters even worse, the agency has developed a tool to track IP addresses of people conducting a search for privacy-enhancing software. It is clear they want no one to feel safe through these additional measures.

But that is not all, as the NSA is also in the loop of connections made to a server hosting parts of an anonymous email service. Visits to the popular Linux Journal – the Original Magazine of the Linux Community are being tracked as well. The NSA event went as far as called the forum and its readers “extremists.”

Most people are well aware of how the NSA is not a big fan of Tor and similar projects. Users who can obtain additional privacy and some layer of anonymity pose a threat to national security, according to the agency. At the same time, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to use the Tor Browser, as not everyone wants to leave digital breadcrumbs all over the Internet.

XKeyScore, as this program developed by the NSA is called, focuses on collection and analysis, as well as exploiting computer network systems. For what reason the agency wants to know everything about every single user on the Internet, is anybody’s guess at this stage. The fact the NSA can surveil privacy-centric users without much effort is not boding well for the future of privacy by any means.

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