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by michaelt 3441 days ago
If I was the NSA, I'd certainly be looking to launch a VPN company or two - maybe even subsidising their offerings, to get them to the top of the performance and value for money charts.

After all, getting users to voluntarily direct their traffic through your network would be much easier than installing snooping hardware at every ISP, backdooring hardware in transit or snooping on undersea cables.
6 comments
pilif 3441 days ago
> If I was the NSA, I'd certainly be looking to launch a VPN company or two

not worth the trouble when you can just compel existing VPN companies to send all traffic to you.

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ionised 3439 days ago
In foreign jurisdictions?
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sixothree 3441 days ago
The obvious answer to this is - if you're paying for a VPN in hopes of avoiding the NSA then you're using the wrong technology.

But since the NSA apparently shares its findings with other agencies, then the same applies if you're using a VPN in hopes of avoiding any sort of government monitoring.

So a VPN is only useful to (possibly) help protect yourself from corporate spying.

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ergot 3440 days ago
> Maybe even subsidising their offering

Yeah there's a few VPNs that look shady because of their pricing. One that springs to mind is LeafVPN[1]. For $5.00 you get to send all your traffic to Mallory. And it even has `LEA` as the first three letters, so you're safe! This is not an endorsement of this service BTW.

[1]: https://leafvpn.com

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Jessicagjo 3432 days ago
any of this services are safe to use http://vpntrends.com/best-vpn-services/ ? Not that i do anything illegal but don't want to send my information directly to the government.
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ryanlol 3441 days ago
If you were the NSA you could hack any VPN company on demand.

Hell, most of them host in super cheap DCs too so guess how good the physical security is?

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patcheudor 3441 days ago
Meh, just get vendors to mess up the implementation of their VPN protocol stack. This one was likely far from intentional but demonstrates quite clearly what can happen when implementations go south:

https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/905344

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Dolores12 3441 days ago
It is easier and cheaper to send GAG order to most popular companies. Check Lavabit case.

PS: I have checked lababit website, seems like they are reopening in 2 days.

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