Tor at the Heart: Riseup.net

> So many Tor users around

> So many Tor users around the world depend on them for protection
their vpn propose usa servers , it is a short choice for an anonymity tool_[users around the world _center ?_].

Thanks so much for

Thanks so much for highlighting the critical role played by Riseup in promoting democracy around the world!

As a Riseup user myself, I know how vital this resource is for activists and political dissidents everywhere--- and how strained are their coffers, so I hope Tor users who use this blog will request an account and donate to help pay for the Riseup servers.

Maybe I missed something, but did you fail to mention the fact that Tails Project extensively uses Riseup Labs for bug tracking and development collaborations?

The Tails version of Tor Browser includes a bookmark to the Riseup webmail server, which possibly should point to the onion rather than the https link. One important point about Riseup webmail: if both sender and recipient have accounts at riseup.net and do not forward emails to accounts elsewhere, it is believed that emails between them should never leave the Riseup servers at all, which could make it much harder for attackers to snoop on metadata (e.g. for traffic analysis, social networking analysis) without risking breaking into the network. This could be an enormous advantage for reporters communicating with sources, especially in cases when other communication modes are not available.

Further, since the Riseup sysadmins try to run a secure ship, even sophisticated state sponsored attackers may acknowledge that any attempts to break into the Riseup network may be noticed, or even worse for them, their malware may be captured, reverse engineered, and published with attribution! This stands in contrast to commercial providers, where security is a low priority (even worse, some commercial webmail providers claim but do not attempt to provide high security).

I hope a Riseup representative can comment on concerns among Riseup users about the fact that the warrant canary

https://www.riseup.net/en/canary

has not been recently updated. This should be updated "approximately" every 3 months but not updated since Aug 2016. To be sure, such concerns have been expressed before, and on those occasions the canary was eventually updated, with no explanation for the delay.

However, a few months ago, the Riseup blog tweeted a reassurance which was oddly worded "no *activists* are at risk", leading to concern that Riseup has possibly been hit with an NSL or some other USG procedure accompanied by a gag order, or perhaps even that Riseup sysadmins are "operating under duress". Some replies to user emails have also been strangely worded. My latest information (some weeks old) seemed to suggest that Riseup was seeking legal advice about something, and hoping to say more after talking with their lawyers.

Micah Lee, a tech advisor to EFF and The Intercept, wrote about the rumors two weeks ago in this story at The Intercept:

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/29/something-happened-to-activist-emai…
Something Happened to Activist Email Provider Riseup, but It Hasn’t Been Compromised
Micah Lee
29 Nov 2016

@ The Intercept: please make sure your reporters's GPG keys as published at The Intercept have not expired! And reporters, please check your Riseup account inboxes. With great caution, since some users report receiving suspected phishing emails.

Regardless of the rumors, as far as I know, Riseup is one of the very few webmail providers which is likely to at least try to fight any NSL or other attempt to exploit "counterterrorism" legislation to harass political dissidents, environmentalists, scientists, technologists, journalists, social justice activists, anti-drug cartel bloggers, and many others who use Riseup.

AFAIK Micah is no longer

AFAIK Micah is no longer part of the EFF.

I believe you are correct.

Yes, I believe that is true.

Why? Something happened?

rise.up is for communicating

rise.up is for communicating between usa guys inside usa territories.
And all is under survey , when i am typing even the admin could censor & replace my words by his own sentences.

riseup is operating under a

riseup is operating under a neocommunist doctrine. If you are alright with people preaching the 'evil of fascism' where 'fascism' is some arbitrary notion of what they don't approve, then I guess you can use their services. If you are not ok with Stalin's ghost, then you should stay clear.

Lol you should be a

Lol you should be a comedian. The Riseup people are as far away from Stalinism as they could possibly be. They're anarchists.

> The Riseup people are as

> The Riseup people are as far away from Stalinism as they could possibly be.

Indeed.

> They're anarchists.

Well, not that either, not really. A very old version of the article at Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riseup

did characterize Riseup as an "anarchist" collective, but Riseup itself does not mention anarchy in their own statement of political principles:

https://riseup.net/en/about-us/politics

The current version of the Wikipedia article says:

> Riseup is a volunteer-run collective providing secure email account, email list, VPN, online chat, and other online services; the organization was launched by activists in Seattle in 1999.

Hope this clears up the nature of Riseup's political stance.

you know , even if they were

you know , even if they were martians multicolored without feet & two heads and anarchists ... i should give it a try ...

I bet the Riseup collective

I bet the Riseup collective wouldn't know the difference between fascism, nationalism and nazism. So it's funny they ask for differentiation between anarchism and stalinism or whatever they call it now.

As a Riseup member, I am

As a Riseup member, I am perhaps entitled to question your knowledge of our knowledge of history and national/international politics.

Hello , These "words"

Hello ,
These "words" [anarchist,socialist,communist,fascism,etc.] are coming from an old historic culture and are not understood by young 'nation' ... so you know , the usa and his knowdledge of the politics ...
Cheers.

So only "old nations" such

So only "old nations" such as Russia, but not "young nations" such as the USA, are capable of understanding political/historical terms?

But aren't we (Americans) all Russians now? Now that a Putin puppet has been "elected" to run the USG?

> So... May i answer to you

> So...
May i answer to you quietly ?
The 'political/historical terms' in reference were known by a struggle during few hundred of centuries and learn before during few thousand ...
A - your culture -usa- is non-existent :
How could you understand "terms" that you have not built with your blood ?
e.g. An anarchist in the usa is a tramp hiding in a train.
e.g. A socialist in the usa is a policeman who is speaking about his italian village.
e.g. A communist in the usa is someone who earns his money in the usa but spends it in cuba
B - your history -usa- is empty :
e.g. The us_ speaks between foreign civilization by a commercial agreement and it is forced not discussed and at our advantage.

> But ...
Russia & Usa are allies and trump-putin are a better solution for the peace & the development than E.U _ if you should have preferred an abandoned [lost nation ?] country without identity governed by the downiest people , why have not voted for their opponent ?
If you are a genuine or a native american (i have few doubt about that but who knows ..); you should look at that you win (a clean & strong nation) & not that you loose (the trash-rap dance-ist).

I dare you: pilot an

I dare you: pilot an ultralight into the courtyard of the cadet barracks at West Point Military Academy and *say that again*! :-)

Actually, this one is quite funny:

o An American anarchist is a tramp hiding in a train.

But what does it mean? Is it some kind of dig at Woody Guthrie?

I hear that Putin was sorely annoyed when Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize, because for reasons known only to himself, he felt he should have won.

Be this as it may, your deprecation of American political dissidents begs the question: if American anarchists are such wimps, why is the FBI so frightened by them?

Assuming for the sake of argument that the feds are not also wimps (which admittedly may be the simplest explanation), one answer is that the only mission statement FBI cares about, follows closely, and is somewhat effective in fulfilling (in common with too many other agencies operated by various governments) is: "dont embarrass the agency". And the following tells the short story of a big embarrassment early in the FBI's disreputable history of failure and oppression:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Buda#Wall_Street_bombing

Yes, you read that right--- before the truck bomb there was the horse-drawn buggy bomb. Good grief.

Anyway, at Riseup we plan marches, media stunts, that kind of thing. And the FBI always claims that they "must" [sic] spy on us all every minute because there might be *someone* somewhere who isn't satisfied with nonviolent approaches to politics. And we reply that using that kind of hypothetical, you can "justify" any oppression. Wonderful.

In short , you have not the

In short , you have not the official right to manifest _ you have not won it and no one has given it to you so you are acting illegally and for nothing (if ouba_ouba & harry_son had to do something they should have yet did that ! ).
*the political terms in reference are a right given by the congress (1897/1929/1962) & have not such importance than a struggle from at least 1000 years.
*i did not know that dylan-bob was looking for a job hiding in a train living with his misery in 1929.
*a false history/opinion from fake usa guy (or russian) even studying at west point are for useless & criminal immigrants.
*i did not know that putin the great had the ambition to be an american citizen walking on the street with his guitar singing 'i love new-york'
*Agencies do not care of the protesters , a bonus is given when someone is matched & arrested
in short , you need some education and certainly not a civilized world.

> you have not the official

> you have not the official right to manifest _ you have not won it and no one has given it to you so you are acting illegally

I *think* you might be claiming that

o I am posting opinions which have not been sanctioned by officials of my government (or yours?)--- I'm proud to affirm that this at least is correct!

o I am implicitly asserting a universal right to free speech--- damn right I am!

o No government has offered me or anyone else such a right--- this one is wrong; you should possibly read the Bill of Rights, and then the Constitutions of some non-USA nations, many of which enunciate a universal right to free speech; you surely recognize that Tor Project is all about the universal right to free speech, so you must know you are not likely to win many adherents in this blog.

> and for nothing (if ouba_ouba & harry_son had to do something they should have yet did that !

This is sufficiently incoherent to cause me some concern that I might be trying to argue with a nonhuman "author". If not, how strange that modern technology has maneuvered a passionate defender of human rights into the worst violation of all--- expressing doubts about the humanity of a human. Good grief. Sometimes it appears literally impossible to exist in the 21st century without being not merely a criminal, but the worst kind of criminal. I can only hope that my expression of doubt about my doubt will absolve me in this instance.

> even studying at west point are for useless & criminal immigrants

So you criticize West Point for... admitting the occasional first generation immigrant?

I can think of all kinds of criticisms, but open admission of qualified candidates regardless of ethnic origin is not one of them.

> i did not know that putin the great had the ambition to be an american citizen walking on the street with his guitar singing 'i love new-york'

I notice you are not denying the rumor that Putin, like Hitler, fancies himself a meritorious artist.

> Agencies do not care of the protesters , a bonus is given when someone is matched & arrested

I *think* you might be stating, with approval, that Surveillance State operatives are given a bonus each time they deanonymize someone, leading to an arrest. No doubt, but what is your point?

> you need some education and certainly not a civilized world.

I *think* you might be stating that you want to send privacy advocates to some kind of political re-education camp, and that defenders of human rights do not deserve the benefits of civilization.

We would argue that the best of all benefits are the rights to live as a human being free to travel, associate, read, think and write freely, to own our own lives and to have the opportunity to define for ourselves who we are and what we want to be the focus of our own lives. But it seems you want to deny us all of these rights.

> i did not know that putin

> i did not know that putin the great had the ambition to be an american citizen walking on the street with his guitar singing 'i love new-york'

Melodiya Records
Balalaika arr. by V. Putin
Sung by V. Putin
Tune by L. Bernstein

From the title track, "Trump-Rossiya Makeover":

New York, New York,
It's a sodomite town,
Let's blow it up, let's blow it down!
Make it glow, make some dough,

Straight from Soros' mouth.

While their political stance

While their political stance troubles me, I think that a pragmatic alliance is a valid approach.
I am willing to follow the "enemy of my enemy" rule if it comes to something so benign as using a group's internet service.

For anyone interested in

For anyone interested in learning what are the actual political principles espoused by Riseup, which are very different from what this commentator claims, see

https://riseup.net/en/about-us/politics

And you should also mention

And you should also mention that the real version of this page used to be quite different. The riseup team decided recently to change it into what you linked to because of the negative controversy against their original manifest, which used to be their flagship for years.

Citation? I've been a member

Citation?

I've been a member for many years and the page has not changed in that time.

But in any case, any collective is entitled to change its political stance is response to drastically changed political conditions, agreed?

Here's a snapshot of the old

Here's a snapshot of the old one, I didn't figure out when it changed
https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20110724044441/https://help.riseup.net…

And the funny thing is that

And the funny thing is that these days 'communities of resistance' are mostly nationalists that riseup.net would probably not approve of :-)

> these days 'communities of

> these days 'communities of resistance' are mostly nationalists

Do you have any evidence for that?

You are most likely correct that few Riseup members adhere to nationalist, much less racist or genocidal views, and those who espouse the latter are sure to be politely asked to close the door quietly as they leave.

I think there used to be

I think there used to be another one, more hardcore.

>> riseup is operating under

>> riseup is operating under a neocommunist doctrine. If you are alright with people preaching the 'evil of fascism' where 'fascism' is some arbitrary notion of what they don't approve, then I guess you can use their services. If you are not ok with Stalin's ghost, then you should stay clear.

It seems you may be Russian.

I wonder whether you might be prepared to admit that a poem which Yevtushenko wrote (in English) about the unexpected (to CIA) collapse of the USSR seems newly relevant to the situation facing American dissidents after the election of the openly pro-Putin authoritarian, Donald Trump:

> We buried our icons.
> We didn't believe in our own great books.
> We fight only with alien grievances.
>
> Is it true that we didn't survive under our own
> yoke,
> Becoming for ourselves worse than our foreign
> enemies?

ISIS is awful, but to many it seems clear that US and RU regimes are far more dangerous to the average citizen living anywhere in the world, but perhaps especially to those living in US or RU.

That is what GPG is for. You

That is what GPG is for. You can ensure that the admin of Riseup (or of the Tor Project blog. I'm not entirely sure which you meant) cannot replace what you said with anything else. They could try to censor you outright, but they could not forge your words.

so i can post an encrypted

so i can post an encrypted message on this blog , that"s fine !
,)

> rise.up is for

> rise.up is for communicating between usa guys inside usa territories.

Not true. For example, civil libertarians in Spain used Riseup to organize to oppose the "Vomit Law". Political dissidents use Riseup to track political corruption in Latin America and Africa. Dissidents around the world use Riseup to stay in touch.

but the vpn are based in the

but the vpn are based in the usa : dangerous for non-residents.

You may be interested in

> If the moderator allows ok

> If the moderator allows
ok : explain that to all_ it is important to clarify this point .. (the link is in http).

your story has nothing to do

your story has nothing to do with usa based vpn used by rise.up and your link is not in https : please stop write above and under every post without reading the subject !
thank you !

> your story has nothing to

> your story has nothing to do with usa based vpn used by rise.up

You mean the VPN service offered by Riseup Networks (riseup.net)?

There is a connection, but the comment explaining it in detail was apparently not passed by the moderator, I don't know why not. (It is also possible, I suppose, that it vanished into the ether due to enemy interference with the connection to blog.torproject.org via Tor nodes possibly operated by an unfriendly entity such as GCHQ or GRU.)

Interested persons can search for stories about a seizure by FBI of a server operated by Riseup for MayFirst, which was first reported by Riseup itself with a clear explanation of why the consequences for Riseup itself were (fortunately) minimal. The seizure was part of a worldwide raid by FBI in which dozens of servers operating remailers were seized, in a failed attempt to stop an unknown actor who was allegedly using remailers to send bomb threats. AFAIK, no actual bombs were ever discovered, and the threats continued well after the raid.

Oh dear, it seems the

Oh dear, it seems the explanatory comment was not passed?

OK, it appeared; see > Did

OK, it appeared; see

> Did you mean that seizures of servers by US LEAs endanger activists outside the USA *more* or *less* than activists inside the USA (and thus easily arrested by those same LEAs)? If the latter, well, obviously. If the former, please explain your reasoning.

Thanks to the moderator for your generosity.

> but the vpn are based in

> but the vpn are based in the usa : dangerous for non-residents.

Did you mean that seizures of servers by US LEAs endanger activists outside the USA *more* or *less* than activists inside the USA (and thus easily arrested by those same LEAs)? If the latter, well, obviously. If the former, please explain your reasoning.

It is unfortunately true that activist collectives around the world frequently experience harassment, including equipment seizures and even raids by local "security authorities".

For example, a Brazilian sister to Riseup had a server seized during political unrest in that country:

https://riseup.net/en/about-us/press/sarava
Riseup stands in solidarity with Saravá
26 April, 2014

>> The Saravá Group is facing the imminent threat of the seizure of its main server by the Public Prosecutor in Brazil. This action comes at a time when Brazil is hosting netmundial, a conference on the future of internet governance. Ironically, earlier this week Brazil passed legislation touted as a “Bill of Rights” for the internet. Yet only days later...

Another group with somewhat similar aims, MayFirst, had a server seized by FBI from the NYC field office in 2012 in connection with FBI's increasingly desperate attempts to identity an anonymous person who was threatening schools in another US state. Because that server was in a colocation facility where MayFirst and Riseup shared space, Riseup users were also affected (but the damage was quickly repaired; the seized server was never used again out of fear that FBI had planted an APT backdoor on it; I do not know the outcome of forensic examination which attempted to find and reverse engineer any malware planted by FBI).

Here is Riseup's statement about that event:

https://riseup.net/en/about-us/press/fbi-seizes-anonymous-remailer
FBI seizes server providing anonymous remailer and many other services from colocation facility.
Attack on Anonymous Speech
20 Apr 2012

>> On Wednesday, April 18, at approximately 16:00 Eastern Time, U.S. Federal authorities removed a server from a colocation facility shared by Riseup Networks and May First/People Link in New York City. The seized server was operated by the European Counter Network (“ECN”), the oldest independent internet service provider in Europe, who, among many other things, provided an anonymous remailer service, Mixmaster, that was the target of an FBI investigation into the bomb threats against the University of Pittsburgh
>> ...

(A small digression, if I may: the modern city of Pittsburgh was a wilderness sparsely populated by persons of European origin during the Washington administration. In 1791, after the Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, imposed the first major federal tax, on whisky sales, farmers in the Pittsburgh area revolted in the so-called "Whiskey Rebellion", because they relied on local sales of whisky for cash. Washington himself led an army of regulars against the rebellious Americans. Owing to a painful back injury suffered in a fall from a horse some years previously, he soon turned over command to Hamilton, who was also a U.S. Army General. The army attacked some farmhouses and eventually arrested most of the rebel leaders, as well as moderates who were trying to make peace. For some time it appeared likely that Hamilton would carry out field executions, but Washington intervened and pardoned most of the rebels. As this story shows, credible threats to American citizens from the U.S. federal government, and from the U.S. military, are hardly a novel phenomenon. And Hamilton was no saint.)

Dozens of servers in other countries (not associated with Riseup) were seized using the same warrant:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/fbi-seizes-activists-anonymous-…
FBI seizes activists’ anonymous remailer server in bomb threat investigation
Remailer was in chain of U. of Pittsburgh threats, but not the source, say activist owners.
Sean Gallagher
20 Apr 2012

> Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations seized a server belonging to an Italian Internet service provider on Thursday as part of an investigation into a series of anonymous bomb threats sent to the University of Pittsburgh. But the groups associated with the operation of the server are calling the seizure an attack on Internet anonymity.

It is notable that the University of Pittsburgh continued to receive threats after this notorious worldwide raid, proving that FBI sees no ethical violation in harming innocent civilians all over the world when its absurdly vaunted reputation is endangered. The servers were eventually returned but of course they could not be used again.

Riseup itself has come under direct attack from various governments, including both governments allied with and hostile to the US government.

A well known example: during street protests against the "Vomit Law" in Spain, a misguided Spanish judge declared Riseup a "terrorist organization" under the broadly written "counter-terrorism" law which had just been enacted in Spain (the "Vomit Law" itself, the very law being protested). In that case, the US DOJ apparently decided that Riseup did not fit the (also very broad) definition of a "terrorist group" under US law.

Less well known examples include apparently stated-sponsored phishing campaigns tied to intelligence agencies maintained by UK and RU, among others.

The widely reported leak of the internal emails of the notorious Italian espionage-as-a-service company Hacking Team showed that someone using an account tied to the Czech national police had ordered up a HT malware tailored for attacking the Riseup mail server. It was not clear from those emails whether he intended to attack all Riseup users, or just one specific user, much less the reason why. It was however clear that he, like many others who hire HT, was pretty clueless about the dangerous tools they wanted to use.

MayFirst also continues to come under nasty attack from various sources. An excellent story which just appeared in ArsTechnica:

>>> “Through our e-mails and our social media accounts we get death threats all the time,” said Janisha Gabriel. “For anyone who’s involved in this type of work, you know that you take certain risks.” These aren’t the words of a politician or a prison guard but of a Web designer. Gabriel owns Haki Creatives, a design firm that specializes in building websites for social activist groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM)—and for that work strangers want to kill her.
>>> ...
>>> Since its creation, pushback against BLM has been strong in both the physical and digital world. The BLM website was taken down a number of times by DDoS attacks, which its original hosting provider struggled to deal with. Searching for a provider that could handle a high-risk client, BLM site admins discovered MayFirst, a radical tech collective that specializes in supporting social justice causes such as the pro-Palestinian BDS movement, which has similarly been a target for cyberattacks.
>>>
>>> MayFirst refers many high-profile clients to eQualit.ie, a Canadian not-for-profit organization that gives digital support to civil society and human rights groups; the group’s Deflect service currently provides distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection to the Black Lives Matter site. In a report published today, eQualit.ie has analyzed six months’ worth of attempted attacks on BLM, including a complete timeline, attack vectors, and their effectiveness, providing a glimpse behind the curtain at what it takes to keep such a site running.

A salient point about these attacks is that social media sites catering to US police officers (yes, they exist; some are even taxpayer funded!) are chock full of ugly (and badly misinformed) opinions about BLM, raising the possibility that the attackers may include (off duty?) cops or misguided supporters of the rabid Sheriff of Milwaukee County, David Clarke. Clarke has stated in numerous editorials that he believes that the USA is in a state of "civil war" (his words) between BLM and the government. Anyone who has compared recent video footage from Aleppo and Milwaukee will probably be disposed to dismiss Clarke as a lunatic, but he enjoys a large following among armed hotheads, which makes him a very dangerous in American politics. And he is apparently being considered for some high level post in the incoming Trump administration.

How should activists react to such threats? With fearful retreat? Certainly not! We must rather redouble our efforts to oppose everywhere the encroaching tide of Fascism which has spread to such formerly democratic nations as the USA and Spain.

Remember, even after Hitler became Chancellor in Germany, if more ordinary citizens had protested against his illegal actions targeting political dissidents, Gypsies, gays, disabled persons (the first mass killings exterminated institutionalized severely mentally disabled patients who were killed in the very asylums where they had been incarcerated), and Jews, Catholics, and other ethnic/religious groups, the Holocaust might never have happened. Even then, after so many disasters for civil liberties had already occurred, it might have been prevented if only more people had acted with courage and resolution.

For invaluable insight into how state sponsored genocides develop, please see:

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html
The Ten Stages of Genocide
Gregory H. Stanton

>>>> Classification Symbolization Discrimination Dehumanization Organization
>>>> Polarization Preparation Persecution Extermination Denial

@ Coren Faife (author of the ArsTechnica story): please obtain Tor Messenger and an account at Calyx Institute and please publish a fingerprint for authentication.

Hi, > but the vpn are based

Hi,

> but the vpn are based in the usa : dangerous for non-residents.
<> you wrote a lot but nothing about in connection with the reference : are you a bit out of the reality ?
# Riseup is a nice solution and maybe almost perfect running on its own closed (between closed friend i mean) platform but the new vpn have 2 vpn based exclusively in the usa so as soon as you enter in you are under the usa laws.

> "Remember, ... resolution."
<> you do not know what you are speaking about and there are no connections with the reference * but the vpn are based in the usa : dangerous for non-residents.*

> "For ...Denial"
<> same answer see above
# it must be a female comment from the white house after the defeat.

thx for reading & publishing my comment.

> Riseup is a nice solution

> Riseup is a nice solution and maybe almost perfect running on its own closed (between closed friend i mean) platform but the new vpn have 2 vpn based exclusively in the usa so as soon as you enter in you are under the usa laws.

Yes, but if you and your friends all use gpg, carefully encrypted/decrypted offline, not even Riseup admins can read the contents. If you and all your friends use Riseup, your emails may never even leave the Riseup network, so to perform "traffic analysis" (for example by constructing a graph whose nodes are riseup user accounts, with an edge between each pair of users who have emailed each other), an adversary would have to compromise the Riseup network. Yes, the USG could put pressure on Riseup admins to simply let them snoop on the metadata, but even then not even NSA (probably) could read the contents.

It's not perfect but it's something.

Something which is effective enough to deeply worry the "security authorities" in various nations, it seems, all of whom want to keep a close eye on their own dissidents. But it seems you already know that!

By the way, Riseup does not discourage anyone from forming their own collective in some country they think is safer than the USA. Quite the contrary.

> thx for reading

Sorry if I misunderstood.

bitmask is all over the world

> And all is under survey ,

> And all is under survey , when i am typing even the admin could censor & replace my words by his own sentences.

Are you talking about Riseup webmail or this blog?

If the former, you can end to end encryption and then no webmail admin can alter your words. Not that I have any reason to think Riseup would ever dream of doing such a thing, or even admins at commercial providers. In most countries, that would be illegal.

Spooks on the other hand operate outside the law in every country and certainly would be happy to alter words if they have intruded into your network.