what kind of information?
if you have a link that you would like to post, can you type it into the post? I have never had any trouble simply cutting and pasting, but I don’t know what computer system you are using.
If you are attempting to post graphics-to my knowledge this board does not support any graphics. You can post such on a free image sharing site and post the link here.
You need to describe what kind of information you are having trouble with. Then we can effectively help.
Of course we can never prove a negative, but the fact that the Russian Government posted a large reward to anyone who could come up with a way to crack TOR is it’s best feature. 
and yes, it could be an elaborate ruse. But that logic is turtles all the way down…
Did you try dumping that information into the bit bucket? Did that work? If not, It sounds to me like your computer might be out of sync with the Ethernet. Call Geek Squad and tell them you have an out-of-sync computer, they have fixed these things in the past for free over the phone. They are also pretty good at doing over the phone bit bucket dumps.
Back doors are not secrets.
I for one am eagerly awaiting hearing the results of these technical procedures.
Please forgive my ignorance. I do not know how to get this information out. I can give you website adresses but the information is several years old and the sites may no longer exist. Here are a few I have been able to get to, there are a lot more.
201110-iss-1ad-t1-onpath.pdf
201110-iss-1ad-t2-netoptics.pdf
201110-iss-1ad-t5-scan_and_target
It looks like I remembered incorrectly about the Clipper. I’ll do some research and see what I’ve conflated when Valentines weekend is over.
A quick Google doesn’t find anything that matched those names.
If you found these files somewhere, a good bet is to Google some pertinent text from one - a small phrase is usually good - or if the document has an internal title, one that is pretty pertinent to the subject, Google that. This will usually turn up a document, if there is a copy out there.
ok I got it now. Enjoy
https://www.wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html
It’s just Wikileaks? OK, that’s fine, but there is nothing especially Earth shattering (so far) here. At least the provenance is usually good. But in terms of evidence of universal computer back-doors, the evidence is going to be rather thin here.
People who take a serious (often professional) interest have been through most of this stuff. If there had been clear evidence of a universal back-door, it would have been front page news worldwide in minutes after it hit Wikileaks.
If you have a specific question about something in a particular document, you might usefully ask about that. But just pointing to Wikileaks as evidence of some unexpected espionage is not much use. Most of what appeared here was not a surprise, just embarrassing that it became public, rather than just assumed.
It is always useful to divide the actual leaked info away from the ranting of people like Assange. (IMHO he has a bit of an issue with self importance, and a habit of attention seeking.)
I don’t want to sound like a scoffer, but if you do not know the difference between a file you have saved on your local system and a website link, you may not be the best judge of potential threats to personal security on the internet.
If this is old news to you then you are more informed than most people. After looking and reading about some of the gadgets listed I find it frightening the things that are being done by government and police. Being able to go into your phone and clone your sim card, being able to enter your computer and change data, and insert virus, and have a heads up display at the station of everything you do on the net. I really dont see how the local police could possibly do these things without facing some sort of criminal charges. Today I read that all FOIA requests related to the use of Stingray(cell phone data interceptors) are to be routed to the FBI. Seems the government has been instructing LEAs to lie about where they are getting information in an effort to keep Stingray technology and use secret. This puts many thousands of criminal convictions in question and the backlash could have serious consequences. This has been going on for years. And some of the information has not only caused arrests but has led to people being killed.
So I guess just forget about my question of backdoors. Things are so far beyond that the question has become irrelevant.
Thank you all for your input.
Never claimed to be a judge of anything, and I did express my inferior knowledge of computers. Came here to try to learn and many of the replies I found to be very informative. Thank you all.
Well, what do you know
NSA's Decade-Long Plan to Undermine Encryption Includes Backdoors, Stolen Keys, Manipulating Standards | WIRED and backdoors tech products, Snowden: The NSA planted backdoors in Cisco products | InfoWorld.
The Wired article is pretty much a summary of what we discussed above.
The Inforworld one is essentially an example of US produced products being covertly hacked. They are not computers, but network gear. It isn’t all that surprising really.
The point is that most of these revelations are not all that surprising, and they are not quite as sinister as the writers seem to want to breathlessly convey. I would say this is little more than operation as usual in a manner unchanged in many decades, if not longer. The precise technical methods move on, but the scope and limits, and the basic underpinning issues, are unchanged. Probably the only interesting thing is that Snowden provided some firm conformation - such as code names, for activities that almost anyone versed in the game would have assumed was occurring, as more to the point, if you were a citizen, you would really want to ask pointed questions if they were not.
Most of these activities rely on a moving set of checks and balances. It isn’t a simple answer, and the tension between privacy and legitimate needs of security agencies is always going to be with us.
It is valuable to maintain an understanding of the issues, but they are not one sided.
Reuters today reports that they’ve detected backdoors in hard drive firmware, most likely from the NSA.
Another breathless article that is old news. Hacking the firmware in a hard drive isn’t hard.
http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack
Again, most of us assumed this was already being exploited by the spooks, and no, you don’t need the co-operation of the manufacturer or access to their source code.
“What’s the big deal about this ‘Watergate’ thing? We already knew Nixon was a crook…”
“What’s the big deal about this ‘Lewinsky’ thing? We already knew Clinton was a horndog…”
“What’s the big deal about this ‘ignored intel briefing’ thing? We already knew Dubya was a dimwit…”
Curiously, those are exactly the right sentiments. Those are all human failings in positions of power. They are not technical issues. Security agency failings are human problems. The above discussion is all about tools. My point is that none of the tools in use should be a surprise. Nothing has changed in hundreds of years in terms of the tension between privacy and security. Nor has the problem moved in that time. The problem is always the humans that make use of the tools available. Humans make human mistakes, and have human failings. They also make good decisions and there are great successes.
If you are worried that your government is overstepping the mark in terms of privacy erosion the place to look for a culprit is not the technology. Be aware of the technology, but don’t be surprised that it continues to keep pace with efforts to thwart it. The right place to look is at your congress-critter or equivalent. If your president is a crook, lecher, or an idiot, you voted for them. Not that our political systems are exactly foolproof, but we do need to make an effort.
What happened to the rest of the posts? There were at least 4 more with more information. Government censorship sucks cecil. Did you sell us out? It is already obvious from the replies that government is interfereing with the discussion. **** this site