Do Cookies Get More Dangerous When Used By the NSA?

Amy sent us an email — and this is what she said:

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/421-national-security/20895-nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking

So TC….would you like to reconsider your position on how harmless cookies are now? Just sayin…..(From Amy)

My response is below – if you’re not familiar with our position on cookies, please read this article.

Hi Amy,

This does not change my opinion about cookies one bit. First of all, the article is sensationalism; NSA has much more sophisticated ways of sniffing web traffic than cookies. I’d say cookies are just an easy way but certainly not the way they really snoop on the general citizenry.

It really irks me when this kind of stuff gets published — obviously every company or person who has a web site wants to drive traffic to it — otherwise what’s the point of having it? The article does not really inform, it tries to scare, and it does so by taking something that may well be true and exaggerating it to the point where it makes things seem far more important than they really are; that is not what either Darcy or I believe to be the correct way to approach things. We believe in telling the truth — based on facts, not speculation, exaggeration, hyperbole or scare tactics.

To start with, the NSA does not use a unilateral approach to snooping. And cookies, if indeed the NSA is actually foolish enough to believe they can count om cookies for much of anything — which I doubt, would be simply a quick and essy way for them to track a user. But savvy users could defeat this so easily, it’s hard to imagine the NSA putting much effort into “cookies”.

There are far more dangerous things going on than NSA setting cookies. No matter who sets cookies, the fact remains they’re easy to delete…they are text files; they do not and cannot execute; cookies would not be used by the NSA for any long term snooping — unless the person they were snooping on was completely naive and never cleared their cookies at all.

Companies, like Yahoo, who turn users data over to authorities – local, state, and federal – without due process of law are far more dangerous to our constitutional freedoms than are NSA’s “cookies”. At least Microsoft and Google are spearheading campaigns to require law enforcement and government agents to serve warrants in order to obtain a users’ email and personal information. Yahoo is much more dangerous than NSA cookies — at least to your privacy and your constitutional rights.

Yahoo has not only freely turned over users personal files, data, and emails, to authorities in the USA without due process, it has also done so in other countries, most notoriously, China. I understand Yahoo wanting to remain in good stead with federal, state, and local authorities, but they obviously don’t give a hoot for the constitutional rights of their users.

The NSA will continue to do as it pleases as long as the citizenry allows them to do so. The American people have had their rights abridged and their constitution disassembled because of the vague threat of terrorism. When the next terrorist attack happens, our rights will be choked even more. As we saw with Boston Marathon bombings, anyone who wants to carryout these kinds of heinous acts will do so. Does anyone believe that anyone wishing to carryout a terrible terrorist act against the United States would ever use the Internet or Cell phones to plan it? If you were such a person, would you? Of course not. All the NSA has done is make it more difficult for criminals who want to do us harm to do us harm — but they cannot make it impossible. And in the meantime, we’re living in a virtual police state and watching our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms be stripped from us all.

If someone wants to write an article making it seems like NSA’s cookies are one of the biggest threats we, as citizens face, that just tells me that the writer and the Web site publishing the piece are more interested in sensationalism and attracting more readers, than in publishing the truth.

The truth is: The NSA has many more sophisticated and sweeping ways of spying than cookies; reading that article would tend to make one think, cookies are one of the major weapons in the NSA’s arsenal — and that’s just not true.

What is true is: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, and apparently now Yahoo have asked citizens to sign a petition against domestic dragnet surveillance by the NSA. Dragnet surveillance means sweeping surveillance by eavesdropping on cell phone calls, cell phone call meta data, Internet traffic, emails, and more – and cookies are a very, very, very minute part of NSA’s snooping.

Your ISP keeps a log of every site you access, every bit of data you transmit and receive, and every every email you send or receive. Your ISP does not need cookies, you actually agree to this when you open an Internet access account. Since all outgoing and incoming data must pass through your ISP, they have it all. If your ISP turns over your logs to any authority, local, state, federal or the NSA, without a warrant – and they do — that is a far more serious attack on your constitutional rights than the NSA setting cookies. If the only issue were cookies, anyone with a modicum of computer knowledge would know how to clear cookies – and I mean completely erasing them by over-writing them 30 or more times with gibberish — could defeat the NSA’s snooping via cookies in just a few minutes.

I’m glad you sent me this link; it is just another example of why people are so confused about all things related to the Internet and computers. There is so much misinformation and hyperbolization being spread by so many supposed news sources, tech writers, bloggers, and others, it nearly impossible for the average person to dig through this pile of exaggeration and just plain prevarication and ferret out the truth.

And to answer your original question again: No I will not reconsider my original position on cookies because I do not need to. This article is hyperbole and much ado about very little.

Whether it’s the NSA using cookies, L L Bean, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google or your aunt Jenny’s Jelly Store web site, cookies are cookies — they’re text files, they cannot execute, and they are easily removed — and erased if you want them erased.

Thanks!

TC