Does Calibre have a NSA backdoor?

[ereaderundecided]

I was wondering what the possibility is that Calibre has a NSA backdoor? I think this is remote, but I'm sure the NSA would love to know what we're all reading

[theducks]

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The code is open source. Why not read every line and find out

[BetterRed]

@ereaderundecided

They get that from Amazon, Google, Apple etc for 'everyone'. The don't need a Calibre backdoor, they can use the side doors in your OS, take a tour of your file system, download the calibre database and give to the new Eric Snowden for analysis and assessment - and he'll flog to the NYT and The Grauniad and then we'll all know what you've been reading

BR

[unboggling]

Don't forget about the option to pay cash for paper books. Pay cash for an expensive room-sized safe. Install a reading lamp and armchair in the safe. Read the paper books in the safe.

Now you have to worry about expert safecrackers. Anyone who wonders what you're reading could send a black bag team including expert safecracker to your house. Alas, this has been done by governments in the past….

So also make sure you have no credit cards, no known address, no internet access, no phone number, no relatives, and no friends.

No electricity for the lamp in the safe unless you bootleg it. Other utilities, such as heat, likewise.

Remember to silence the team of people that transported and installed the safe and anybody else that knows about it.

For each paper book you buy, silence the human clerk who glanced at it.

But you may be picked up and interrogated under drugs. So don't go out.

Ensure everything you own or buy (with non-sequential-numbered cash cleaned of fingerprints) contains no electronic tracking or other spy devices. This requires advanced technical knowledge and equipment. Micro spy devices could be hidden in the binding of the paper books.

Or possibly even hidden internally in the walls of the safe.

Or hidden in the food you eat, which means a micro spy device could be inside you, sending the sub-vocalizations you make while reading to whoever wants to know. Which they could also sell to anyone else who wants it, to defray their costs in bugging you.

[BetterRed]

@unboggling - you forgot to tell him to buy a tin hat, and to not give his email address to any Human Rights Watch agents, especially 'pretty' ones from Moscow.

Just after this was posted on Fakebook and got Twaddled all over the planet, Obama closed down the Texas based lavabit mail service

BR

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@unboggling - you forgot to tell him to buy a tin hat, and to not give his email address to any Human Rights Watch agents, especially 'pretty' ones from Moscow.

The only Human Rights Watch agents I would be willing to give my e-mail address to would BE the 'pretty' ones from Russia!

[unboggling]

@BR, I am reliably informed by undisclosed sources that tin hats don't work very well.

A full-body-suit faraday-cage with integral electronic jammers would work well, except for complications arising from the need to eat or eliminate waste. Which could be solved by the safe/room also being a faraday-cage with jammers.

Alas, I cannot look at that Facebook reference because I have no Facebook account. Why give anybody personal information that increases the possibility of identity theft, being spied on, etc...

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@unboggling - you forgot to tell him to buy a tin hat, and to not give his email address to any Human Rights Watch agents, especially 'pretty' ones from Moscow.

Just after this was posted on Fakebook and got Twaddled all over the planet, Obama closed down the Texas based lavabit mail service

BR

Originally Posted by GoSharks

The only Human Rights Watch agents I would be willing to give my e-mail address to would BE the 'pretty' ones from Russia!

Right, I forgot:

No sex with any humans, of whatever persuasions. Be very wary. Also note that pets could be bugged too. Likewise aliens, sentient or not. Limit human and non-human interaction to the barest-possible minimum. Thoroughly investigate all potentially-interacting organisms or objects before risking any interaction whatsoever.

Personally do all dental and medical work on yourself yourself.

Sorry, but I keep thinking of additional precautions…

[MelBr]

Originally Posted by ereaderundecided

I was wondering what the possibility is that Calibre has a NSA backdoor? I think this is remote, but I'm sure the NSA would love to know what we're all reading

As weird as it sounds, FBI was 'caught' using Patriot Act to get library's records in the past:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082501696.html

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Sect...ontentID=21662

As for NSA, they don't have to do any of that. They just hack/break/get-lawful-access into internet backbones and just split optical fibers and trawl raw packets. When you buy a book from one of the services, they know. When you view a book on Amazon, they know (incidentally, Amazon doesn't even bother with SSL except for checkout & CC submission.. shameful).

Given enough data, it's trivial to categorize a person based on what they read. It's ML 101. They can figure out your age, sexual preference, whether you have pets or kids etc. Given enough of these sorts of categorizes they can categorize you and figure out whether you pose a risk to society, US, gov etc. I just don't think they can act on all this info… if you're an American that is! If you're foreign, your data is free for all.

Have you seen Minority Report? That type of prediction tech isn't far off (sans precogs of course).

[unboggling]

I got paranoid reading all of the above. I would just like to say for the record that I am not a criminal, terrorist, or spy; any precautions I wrote about above were intended as humor off the top of my head.

No comment re precogs a la Minority Report. Except: I am not now, have never been, nor intend to be a precog.

[ApK]

Just what do we know about this "Kovid" person. That's a Bond villain name if I ever heard one....

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by unboggling

Alas, I cannot look at that Facebook reference because I have no Facebook account. Why give anybody personal information that increases the possibility of identity theft, being spied on, etc...

Just use someone else's Fakebook account, if you buy your gemstones at Sook Lew Chee's at Scott's Market Rangoon you'll probably get some for free. Meanwhile here's a snap of what HRW agent Tanya Lokshina posted on her Fakebook account - within days lavabit closed down, funny that.

@MelBR - ML101 - is that aka Apple's Mountain Lion for Dummies

Originally Posted by MelBR

I just don't think they can act on all this info… if you're an American that is!

But if you are an American and you actively campaign against what they want (eg SOPA) then they can drive you to despair and then to your grave with threats of 50 year jail terms. Even if you did also campaign in favour of someone who would support Obamacare to take the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. RIP Aaron Swartz.

I wont make the same claims as unboggling about what I'm not and have never been, they would know its untrue - they already know everything about me, I've seen some of 'my' files. Maybe it was my lavabit account they wanted, I would have given it to them if they'd asked :lol:

BR

[unboggling]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Just use someone else's Fakebook account, if you buy your gemstones at Sook Lew Chee's at Scott's Market Rangoon you'll probably get some for free. Meanwhile here's a snap of what HRW agent Tanya Lokshina posted on her Fakebook account - within days lavabit closed down, funny that….
BR

Thanks for the snap.

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by ApK

Just what do we know about this "Kovid" person. That's a Bond villain name if I ever heard one....

I'll bet he has a cat...

[MelBr]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@MelBR - ML101 - is that aka Apple's Mountain Lion for Dummies

Close, it's machine learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning When you see recommendations on various sites, that's just one example of ML in action. ML is all over now and it's used by all of the big (and small) companies for all kinds of things.. from tracking you across the web (Google) to tracking your likes and recommending you friends (FB) and people to follow (twitter). ML is so widespread that it's invisible to vast majority of people who don't know what the tech is doing behind the scenes.

Nat Sec agencies use it for tracking & categorizing people. From yesterday's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...pagewanted=all