This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
How do you hide your real identity online? Is it easy to connect your online persona with your true identity? Is internet anonymity even possible?
Internet anonymity is the concept of keeping what you do online private. With changes in technology, it is more of a theoretical concept than a realistic one.
Read more about internet anonymity and how the Tor Project browser may be a viable solution.
Is Internet Anonymity Possible?
The Internet made a lot of things both easier and harder at the same time. For example, if a CO couldn’t find information about a target on the CIA databases, the CO would probably be able to find the target on the public Internet. However, on the public Internet, any search was trackable.
Whenever you search something on the Internet, your request typically goes directly to the website you’re aiming for. Your request is tagged with source and destination headers, which tell anyone who’s looking where the request is going and where it came from.
The CIA didn’t have a good solution. Whenever a CO needed to search someone on the public Internet, they were supposed to contact the CIA and get them to do the search for them. The CIA would do so using a “nonattributable research system,” which involved setting up a front business that would have some legitimate reason to do the search. Setting up a front was a lot of work—it needed a physical address, URL, website, and servers—and if it wasn’t done properly, the business could be traced back to the CIA.
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best summary of Edward Snowden's "Permanent Record" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Permanent Record summary :
- What Ed Snowden discovered that caused him to completely lose faith in the government
- How Snowden led the bombshell reports of US mass surveillance
- How Snowden is coping with his treatment as both patriot and traitor
