...because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law...

...VPNs might protect you against garden-variety criminals, but the intentional commingling of origin/destination points by VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept (and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will)...

Certainly the NSA isn’t concerned about “incidental collection.” It’s never been too concerned about its consistent “incidental” collection of US persons’ communications and data in the past and this isn’t going to budge the needle, especially since it means the NSA would have to do more work to filter out domestic communications and the FBI would be less than thrilled with any efforts made to deny it access to communications it doesn’t have the legal right to obtain on its own.

Since the government won’t do this, it’s up to the general public, starting with everyone sharing the contents of this letter with others. VPNs can still offer considerable security benefits. But everyone needs to know that domestic surveillance is one of the possible side effects of utilizing this tech.

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[–] 12 points 7 months ago (18 children)

Is it safe enough to use vpns based out of the US? I'm using nord which is non us.

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  • [–] 54 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    Nord is owned by Tesonet, a data mining company which also owns SurfShark.

    And Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN are owned by Kape, an Israeli firm.

    ProtonVPN is owned by Proton, in Switzerland.

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    Those are the ones that would cause them to surveil you.

    The issue isn't necessarily "the government will target you for using a VPN;" the issue is "if your IP makes you look like you're outside the US because that's where your traffic exits the VPN, the laws against domestic spying won't protect you properly because you'll look like a foreigner."

    Frankly, the headline is heavily spinning it to be anti-VPN fearmongering.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    Yeah I reacted way too quickly. Then I realized half of X bot traffic spoofs everywhere. They're intentionally doing a shakeup of everything and this one got under my skin cause I'm a daily user.

    But before this was that outside US router ban that was pretty real. The DJI ban. So these types of news cascade and its worrisome.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Privacy companies based outside the US can still have VPN servers within the US. That traffic would still look domestic. The company being owned and headquartered outside the US just gives them a bit more protection against the rogue US government.

    Some VPNs also allow multi-hop, so that you can connect to one VPN server via another. That could make it harder for the spooks to see that your traffic is leaving the US. Of course it also means that they might suspect any traffic coming out of a VPN server even based in the US, which is basically the point of this article.

    And some VPNs allow you to enable a feature that protects against AI-driven data traffic analysis. So that someone who's really committed can't just monitor the size and frequency of your outgoing encrypted packets, then find matching patterns in packets leaving the server you're connected to, tracing it to the destination. Instead, the VPN adds noise and sends uniform packets so that AI can't trace it from source to destination.

    I don't know if Nord offers these features, cause I don't use Nord. But I've heard some issues about them, which other user's have already mentioned and offered alternatives for, so I'll leave it at that

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, sorry, I wasn't as precise as I could've been. I was really just trying to convey the motivations (i.e. that it was due to being mistaken for foreign as opposed to being targeted for using a VPN), not go into the details of exactly which aspect of the VPN (the entrance IP geolocation, the exit IP geolocation, or the company HQ location) would actually trigger the "foreign-ness."

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    I mean, even a US-based VPN company could look foreign if they have servers outside the US, or even if they just allow multi-hop to third-party servers to/from outside the US.

    Except then they're even more vulnerable not only to subpoenas but also extrajudicial and unconstitutional raids, as some journalists have discovered, especially in deeply red states but not always...

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Is it safe enough to use vpns based out of the US?

    yes, just be aware that the gov could require the company to log you without letting you know, even if they have a no log setup. For the everyday person this is a non-issue, but if you are doing shadey stuff or have ties that may make someone super interested in your activities, you may wanna choose elsewhere.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The everyday person has political views that can be categorized as extremist. Freedom is more costly.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Oh, I fully understand that. But the everyday person isn't going to affect the government to the extent where they want to not only issue a court order ordering a company to do this, but also issue a gag order to prevent the company from saying anything.

    Political leaders, possibly. Terrorist organizers, definitely. But your typical protest, or right versus left debate, that's not going to be enough for them to bother, let alone a court order forcing it.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    In theory, I think all VPN usage is grounds to get you put on a list, but Nord is considered a relatively "normie" company by privacy aficionados. Everybody and their mother has seen an ad for it by this point. (The privacy aficionados will probably tell you it's not good enough, but that's a can of worms I won't get into right now.)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Makes sense I should probably reframe it as is nord not going to sell their users out without a fight.

    Only true privacy is like the tails stuff and some complicated routing stuff all the self hosting guys here probably know about.

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