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The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool?
Wired News is reporting that the equipment found in the "secret" NSA room at AT&T wasn't some elaborate device designed by Big Brother. Rather, it is a commercially available network-analysis product that any company could acquire. From the article: "'Anything that comes through (an IP network), we can record,' says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. 'We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their VOIP calls.'"
The error page of "Nothing to see here. Move Along." that showed up when first clicking on the comments link was hilarious.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's not too surprising that the government would use off-the shelf solutions for electronic devices. After all, there aren't many circuit boards made in the United States still, are there? How much does Texas Instruments produce domestically for instance?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Oh. Well, since the NSA bought the software that it's using, then that makes everything okey with me... :-/
This guy's the limit!
I wonder how this will make people feel now that everyone is complaining about how the "government" is listening and recording phone calls and what have you. I would be curious to see what companies are using this technology and the reasons they give.
Makes perfect sense. Because anyone can do it to themselves, it makes it perfectly alright for these companies to do so morally. At which point they just hand the stuff over to the government.
I somehow doubt that they are just using a "commercially available network-analysis product". I mean what "commercially available network-analysis product" breaks encryption?
From TFA, the deliverable:
We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their VOIP calls.
AT&T. Your world, delivered.
If enough large companies are purchasing these to the degree that a company manufactures this equipment...exclusively.. doesn't that strike an interesting chord?
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Great! So, do you get the Amazing PauseTheUniverseTechnology free with this nifty gadget? Because it'll take some time to review "anything that comes through".
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Wired News has posted the AT&T whistleblower's evidence, which AT&T is trying to get returned to them and out of court documents: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70908-0.htm l?tw=wn_index_3
...is that we hear about stuff like this as fact before the rest of the world even hears it as rumor. I believe it's been a while that companies have been using this to keep track of what their employees are doing on work time (where I work, we had to sign a document stating that we knew that any and all communications at work, from VOIP to e-mail to webpages, regardless of encryption, could be recorded with no further notice) and to follow court-ordered tracking. The internet is not a secure place to be by any means, and it's best to proceed as if someone is watching. Because, chances are, someone is.
It's a girl!
I'm so happy to know that the product the NSA - with the help of AT&T - used to analyze phone number patterns and the like can be purchased by any citizen.
But - that's not the problem as I see it. The problem, to borrow and massacre a line from "Jurrasic Park", is that they were so eager to see if they could they didn't consider if they should.
Take the domestic to international wiretap thing. Under US law, listening in on foreign conversations is A-OK (whether that's legal in other countries I'm not even going to worry about). But the law is clear: the second there's a domestic person on that call, the NSA has to get permission from the courts. And not only that, it can be a secret court. And not only a secret court, but they can do it up to 3 days after they start - so there's no issue of "Dang, we'd listen to this call from an Al Queda agent, but we can't because Michael Moore's on the phone, and the warrant will take too long!" No - they can start now, get the warrant later.
Then there's the domestic phone call tracking. Even if this is not strictly illegal, it still smacks of wrong. (Yes, I think there are things not illegal that are still wrong. Like Mint Oreos. Very wrong, just not illegal.) Why? Because there's no independant, "checks and balances" oversight. And yes, I have things to hide, before you ask, so I don't want the government picking that out. Like people in politics I call because I disagree with their politicies, or calls to an abortion clinic for a friend of mine who's husband is abusive and says he'll kill her if she calls the clinic, or to a reporter because my place of work is doing illegal things (note for the clueless: the former might or might not be true, but they are examples of why people might not want the government tracking calls) - the list goes on. So I don't want the government snooping in on, especially when there's no guaruntee that Joe Politician can't look in and try and use that data against me or my family or the very government system itself.
So, great to know that there are over the shelf components to track log files. I'm more interested in making sure that another branch of the government is at least watching out to make sure that this data is not being abused. No, I don't need all of the details - that's why we have elected leaders whom I (hopefully) trust enough to look out for my interests - I just want to make sure those interests are protected by the process.
Which said process, so far, seems to be either willingly ignored, or outright violated.
Of course, this is all just my opinion, and I could be wrong. And to the NSA folks tracking this post - Hi!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
the equipment found in the "secret" NSA room at AT&T wasn't some elaborate device designed by Big Brother. Rather, it is a commercially available network-analysis product that any company could acquire.
Sure, anybody could acquire the hardware used. The trick is to get the equipment onto AT&T's network without ending up in jail.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
This is why we should all use Tor. The more people that use it (and setup their node as a server) the faster it gets.
From http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/faq.php#15
What is Daytona?
Daytona is a database management technology originally developed and maintained by the AT&T Laboratories division of AT&T, and is used by AT&T to manage multiple databases. Daytona was designed to handle very large databases and is used to manage "Hawkeye," AT&T's call detail record (CDR) database. Daytona is also used to manage AT&T's huge network-security database, known as "Aurora." As of September 2005, all of the CDR data managed by Daytona, when uncompressed, totaled more than 312 terabytes.
http://www.research.att.com/projects/daytona/
What is Hawkeye?
Hawkeye is AT&T's call detail record (CDR) database, which contains records of nearly every telephone communication carried over its domestic network since approximately 2001, records that include the originating and terminating phone numbers and the time and length for each call.
What is Aurora?
Aurora is a network-security database that had been used to store Internet traffic data since approximately 2003. The Aurora database contains huge amounts of data acquired by firewalls, routers, honeypots and other devices on AT&T's global IP (Internet Protocol) network and other networks connected to AT&T's network.
News: that the US Government is monitoring all the traffic flowing through the internet backbones provided by major US service providers. Not News(tm): that a company produces a device that can *GASP* *SHOCK* *HORROR* monitor network traffic. Get a grip.
'Anything that comes through (an IP network), we can record'
I'm sure they are just using it to get free porn.
1 voice in a sea of voices
Why is it legal for any old schlum to buy this and run it secretly?
If these tools exist at all outside of ISP end user envrionments (IE; corporate intranet), they should need to report publically what traffic they have access to, and report at a bi-annual audit what traffic had been monitored.
And if you don't comply with that... You can't use it.
But... We won't do that, because then we won't make money, even if we could be collecting a multimillion dollar lawsuit from the NSA right now.
To be honest, I am starting not to care about all of the this post-911/coup attempt to takeover the US government that failed. I will surf where I want, say what a want, and if the government is truly stupid and sends me one of those National Security Letters (NSLs), I will post it right here on slashdot.org as well as rense.com, infowars.com, and anyone else who will post it on their site because I just do not care. Those pentagon photos of "flight 77" was just more smoke and mirrors to keep people distracted from the real problems. Just say it was a shoulder fire missle and the plane is at the bottom of the Atlantic so we can all move on with our lives. The Leo Straussion Neocon facists (Republicans) can come kiss my ass, it's not like anyone can do anything about what they are doing anyway.
I don't see any big deal with recording all data I/O at AT&T and handing it directly to the National Security Agency. After all, if they have to listen to all my conversations in order to prove I'm not a terrorist, I don't see what the---
***WOOP WOOP WOOP! Red flag word used! (Queue NSA goons smashing through my windows)***
stuff |
Of course you can reconstruct any information that flows across a network thay you have access to. That is unless it's encrypted and you don't know the key.
In this age of instant copyright, outside of a company using this embedded in its corporate TOS, storing my written communication would be a copyright violation. I'm talking man in the middle, if they are storing then they would be violating.
So, article starts with:
... - it's a commercial product!
The equipment that former AT&T technician Ed Klein learned was installed in the NSA "secret room" in AT&T's San Francisco switching office isn't some sinister Big Brother box designed solely to help governments eavesdrop on citizens' internet communications."
Oh great - I feel so much better about that. I was just worried that the government might have EXCLUSIVE rights to spy on me! But, as long as it's all shared and everyone can do it, then I guess it's ok.
Thanks for the post - I'll sleep so much better now.
Damn - where's the sarcastic emoticon when you need it.
Think of a Beowulf cluster of those!
The Big Brother 1000.
If you don't like it, encrypt it.
argumentum ad fallacium: Fallacy of defining a fallacy which allows one to dismiss the argument in question.
There used to be a saying "Cops always have the best drugs!" These days I think it has been replaced with "The NSA always has the best porn!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So you mean that if you take a IP packet stream and analyze the headers you can reconstruct the communications??? When did this madness start? What kind of voodoo magic are they using up there?
Anything that comes through (an IP network), we can record
How long until the RIAA comes knocking at this guy's door?
The Government doesnt develop anything. They just restrict the companies they contract or buy from not to say anything about their operations.
Whoop-de-doo.
The Governement contracts, it doesnt develop.
Visit AnoNet.. a complete Internet unto itself, within the Internet!
Run everything, talk to anyone, all under a veil of encryption.
Visit the website.
I don't care if they were running tcpdump...it doesn't make it any less troublesome.
that you find all over the net. Silly girls thinking they were performing a show for just their boyfriends... So how do I get a job in that division of AT&T??? :-D
and all I hear is a bunch of bellyaching and "ooh they're evil!". As I stated a few weeks ago, Who is going to do anything about it? Evertyime we turn around the American government or corporations come up with a new way to spy on us, restrict our rights or do something else to make the world a little less pleasant.
If they can't come up with anything specific that day, W. calls the RIAA and has them sue a dead woman. They want to make people so damn paranoid that one day they'll just turn around and say "Okay we're taking over your life, here is your itinerary for the day, don't alter this schedule. You have a bowel movement scheduled in 15 minutes". The vast majority will think its an awesome idea.
These stories are great to remind us what a wasteland this place has become, but they serve no real purpose if no one actually does anything about it.
How much of the Internet traffic can be funneled through this -- or any such -- room? Is it a bottleneck, or something routed around? Just how much of the web's traffic can any single such room "see", and how many rooms like this would it take to see it all -- let alone figure out where to store it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And they don't even have to go to the effort of tracking it down. The let everyone else do that work for them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And the RIAA does not get a cent on royalties! shocking
In other new, the RIAA sue the NSA!
Ethereal. Excellent tool, even for non black hats!
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
From the Key Benefits section of their web site... Field-proven ability to meet the most stringent requirements of the world's largest networks such as AT&T, KDDI, Vodafone and Korea Telecom.
Dear Narus,
i PxHsoCwtOeytveJ H49A==
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
jA0EAwMCiGG6wLlc/6tgyUeJGySx1Ccd8lGe3ugi35iwgMr2y
r8fdeb237gtWNHzaen4DpYF9ibJ4E6DCxm8+yGpYcoP7bgEnz
=BJEi
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
(created with "gpg -a -c"). Just a reminder that if you don't like people reading your email, you and your recipient can rather easily make sure nobody can practically do so.
The NSA could probably break one PGP message's encryption in a matter of hours (or maybe even minutes), but they couldn't break one million. How about we all really press our friends to get PGP keys made+signed and the software installed...and ENCRYPT EVERY SINGLE PERSONAL EMAIL to them? Good luck to the NSA trying to sift through all that crap.
Please help metamoderate.
Narus Customer Profiles
Even if this is not strictly illegal, it still smacks of wrong. (Yes, I think there are things not illegal that are still wrong.
Good grief, I hope that pretty much everyone is in agreement that illegal and immoral are intersecting sets for which the intersection is a proper subset of both sets.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This method will produce lots of bellyaching and lawsuits by critics and cost billions of dollars, but other than that, I don't think the governement will actually learn anything from this spying, least of all learn how to stop any terrorist activities who are just as likely to be using encryption as they are to be using a computer to conduct illegal activities.
I'm not mad about being "spied" on in this fashion, just that they're wasting their time and my money in a huge way. There's no way to produce any meaningful results by snooping about a trillion terrabytes of IP traffic every day.
Jason
http://www.itmfa.com/
It'd be a start.
And if anyone else wants to..... download Ethereal. Or if you have some big money to spend get Network Generals sniffer. As far as the encryption goes, someone had to write the program that determines how information is encrypted. Which leads to, "If it can be encrypted, it can be forcefully decrypted at an endpoint other than the intended receiver."
:P
Can't remember who said that, but I always seem to remember it
"brix_zx2, What is your sole purpose in this forum!?!?!"
"To do whatever you tell me MODERATOR!!!!"
Let see how much disk space the NSA has - let all download couple hundred gig of junk a day!!!
100,000 people download 100G each = ?
Like Mint Oreos. Very wrong, just not illegal. Why? Because there's no independant, "checks and balances" oversight.
Not true, Nabisco is very careful to check every cookie to see how much it weighs on the balance.
And yes, I have things to hide, before you ask, so I don't want the government picking that out.
Ah, so you admit to eating Mint Oreos then. Don't worry, the government won't pick out the filling in the center. They'll just take the whole cookie.
Just to play devil's advocate.....
Use Tor, why? So I can get investigated/exposed in the media/arrested when someone uses my node for something illegal? No thanks. Acted as a server node for a while, then decided it was not worth the risk with all this homeland security paranoia.
Law Enforcement (in this day and age of 0wned PCs, insecure wireless access points, Tor, RIAA tracking IPs to people who don't have computers, etc) STILL considers IP addresses to be valid and accurate identifiers of people. If something got traced to it and the ISP told them you had it at the time, guess what? You did it. The burden of proof would really be on YOU to prove that it was not you who was sending out a threatening email, communicating with a known terrorist, uploading child porn, or whatever. If they do know about Tor, they probably consider it more evidence that you are up to something illegal (just like PGP)
Perhaps you would be able to create enough reasonable doubt (assuming it was a real trial and not a secret government trial) to get off. I'm sure that would make you feel a little better after having your "crimes" written about at length in the local paper, your picture up on the local (maybe national?) news media, and possibly your money, job, family, and friends gone. Just because you won a court case does not mean everyone will not still assume you are guilty. How many people think OJ is innocent?
I'm not advocating being spineless and not taking a stand with technology, just remember what the risks are and ask yourself if you are really willing accept them. Today the population trusts anything that law enforcement tells them, especially if it is an internet related crime and even more so if it involves terrorism. Some geek whining about something called "tor" isn't going to convince your community you are not a dirty stinking terrorist.
Finkployd
No! Sending non-broadcast packets on an IP network is not Distribution.
That's like saying that mailing an envelope via postal mail is distribution!!
IP packets clearly specify the source and destination address. (i.e. their payload is to only be received by the specified recipent).
The only difference is that we do not have federal laws that make "opening the contents" of an IP packet to be illegal. Otherwise it is no different than the postal mail system.
I've thought about buying a SSL setup for my blog so that people coming and going from it can do so in encryption-provided peace. It would be a bold move for civil liberties if hosting services would provide cheap access to SSL for their shared hosting customers. I'd pay an extra $5-$10/month for it, even if the certificate was shared with 20 other blogs at my host. The government just doesn't need to know these things. It's sick and perverted that they would even ask. The only place that it's considered doing your job to be a peeping tom is in the federal government.
Then there's the domestic phone call tracking. Even if this is not strictly illegal, it still smacks of wrong. ... Why? Because there's no independant, "checks and balances" oversight ... I'm more interested in making sure that another branch of the government is at least watching out to make sure that this data is not being abused. No, I don't need all of the details - that's why we have elected leaders whom I (hopefully) trust enough to look out for my interests - I just want to make sure those interests are protected by the process.
There is oversight. Congressional committees were informed years ago. However election season is upon us so there is a lot of fake outrage and posing for the cameras and microphones going on.
Great to know that the same Big Brother software is being used in USA and China. Invokes some warm fuzzy feeling of union...
Nothing would kickstart the federal government's long term goal of outlawing encryption into action again (remember Gore and the Clipper Chip?) faster than if more people started using it.
Finkployd
for those who may not scroll all the way down the customer profiles:
Saudi Telecom, the preeminent telecommunications provider in the region, is employing the NarusInsight Discover Suite's VoIP detection application module to recover revenue that would otherwise be lost through unregulated VoIP traffic. Deployed by Narus Partner Giza Systems, NarusInsight captures and analyzes all VoIP traffic in the Saudi Telecom network. The VoIP detection module provides the real time information necessary for Saudi Telecom to block traffic destined for unregistered international VoIP gateways, thereby enforcing tariffed gateway regulations. NarusInsight is the leading choice for managing IP services in the Middle East largely because of its ability to successfully address critical business issues like VoIP detection in real-time.
wow...
- MM
Did you notice how most of the companies on the list are using it to block VoIP traffic? I love the phrasing, that VoIP is "revenue leakage" that is somehow owed the company. It'd be a shame if people actually used the bandwidth that they buy for whatever they want, wouldn't it?
Still, the amount of traffic these things can handle is pretty impressive.
So, all of those folks emailing around .doc files instead of pdfs and text are helping preserve our freedoms by making more bits for these guys to sift through and parse?
The law of the land (the USA anyway) says that if you have a conversation in a restaurant, there is no expectation of privacy. If you have a conversation at home, you do have an expectation of privacy, unless I consent to having my conversation recorded. As soon as you send/receive information in a public place there is no expectation of privacy, from a legal perspective.
If you send/receive packets of data over a public connection, i.e. the internet, somehow you are expecting privacy? Hmmm. (notice the thoughtful pause) If you want or need privacy over a public medium, it seems simple to me. Use encryption.
Don't get me wrong, I hate big government and big government's intrusion into my personal life. But, I also do not see my internet activity as a personal/private activity. There are just too many people involved. Webmasters see me visiting their site. My ISP knows where I go and what I do. So, I assume there will be others knowing that stuff too. There may be dozens of people 'knowing' what my internet activity looks like. No, I do not like big brother recording everything. It will, however take an amazing database to house all the data while waiting to be filtered and I am doubtful that the end result will accomplish what they are striving for.
First, the morons want everybody to believe that just because the Narus device can be used for traffic analysis - which is fundamentally a benign activity, unless it's used to deny somebody's traffic - which the telcos now want to do - that therefore the device is "harmless."
Horseshit.
This device as designed and built for spying, and was placed into telcos everywhere on the PRETEXT of being useful for traffic analysis. Then the NSA came calling and bulldozed the telcos into giving them everything that goes through it.
The fact of the matters is that Narus the company is run by an "Israeli immigrant" and is financed by, among others, an Israeli investment company, one of the partners of whom happens to have worked for the Israeli government, including a stint developing optical devices for the Israeli military.
And one of the directors on the board happens to be an "ex-" NSA guy (or as General Golgo said in the James Bond movie, "Nobody ever leaves the KGB!")
The reality is that this device was designed and built for spying by the Mossad, in collaboration with the NSA, and then sold to the telcos under a pretext, which was then altered by arm-twisting or payment to the telcos to sell out the US Constitution.
It's that simple.
And every gutless moron posting here who says, "So what?" is a traitor to the United States and deserves to have his Internet porn recorded by the morons at NSA.
Stupid suckers won't care until they're locking your ass up for even POSTING on
But then, since most of posters are
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I think the most frightening part is that when I talk to my more conservative family members and most people who only casually know about these issues or politics, they see NOTHING wrong with everyone and their brother recording all the information they can on them and their family/friends. Their reasoning .. I have nothing to hide, why should I care? It is catching the "evil dooers".
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
"Four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo in this order!"
At which point are you guys now? I'd say it's already past the third, no?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
maybe the real terrorists have just said FUCK it!!!
and are sending their communications on tourist postcards with special codes
or sneaker netting it
meanwhile the NSA now knows I have a strange fixation on Japanese upskirt sites....OH WAIT!!!!
seriously how much more spying on the American people do we have to see, before we realize something is seriously F_cked in the land of free and home of the brave?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Of course there's a market for this. Where have you been? Universities and Companies have been rolling these things out to keep an eye on their networks for a while now. And this has been predicted for a long time before that.
Here's another product which basically does the same thing
You couple this, along with lots of cheap SATA storage on a Hypertransport Bus, and you're looking at storing network information for at least months, possibly years. At the rate technology is going, it will only get easier to store all of a student/employee's network connectivity for forever.
It looks like the tinfoil hat crowd was right all along. Clearly it's time to wake up and become aware of this stuff, as it's only going to become more ubiquitous.
If you're looking for a defense, the only complete one is Tor .
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
You my friend, have brightened my day.
What a wonderful, thought provoking premise.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Saudi Arabia is ruled by one of the most repressive regimes on this planet, so of course they want to spy on their citizens. Incidentally, the House of Saud is on very chummy terms with the Bushes.
This is Slashdot, so I'm pretty sure that the correct answer is still soap. If we are just ranting, we are on the soap box. Besides, SOAP is the only one that is a web protocol.
Think global, act loco
If all data were sent encrypted, this would not be a problem - it would be just like the US postal mail today - too much effort to try and intercept /all/ mail - but with enough effort and suspicion, you can still get at /some/ mail.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
A few years back a mailing list on a controversial topic was hosted on one of my home site's computers.
I made it a rule that NO encrypted traffic would run through that site - and no illegal activity (including confessions of wrongdoing) would be allowed on the mailing list. (Had to shut it down for a few days once to drive that point home.)
Reason?
If the traffic was in the clear, should the cops become suspicious they could tap it and check. And they'd prefer to do that, since it would avoid tipping off the hypothetical bad guys and let them collect more information and evidence.
If the traffic was encrypted they couldn't tap it effectively. But if they could get a warrant to tap the line they could easily get a warrant to break in, sieze the computer, and anything else they could find. Then they could examine any in-the-clear archives of the list on the computer - which they would expect they might find - or hunt down any keying information that might be stored, at their leisure. And, having established probable cause for the initial search, they could use anything ELSE they found as evidence, even if it was unrelated to the original search. Meanwhile they'd have shut down the "suspect operation" and greatly inconvenienced its operators.
(Since then the mailing list has been replaced by a successor hosted elswhere by others. I still don't encrypt my email in general. But now I'm free to use SSH or VPN to connect to my employer's machines - along with all the other employees, since it's company policy.)
Using encryption to "seal" envelopes is a good idea - if lots of people do it. The more it's used on ordinary stuff, the less it serves as a flag that there's something interesting behind it. But even if it's common you should be aware of the potential downsides and take them into account when deciding whether to encrypt.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sure, it's not practical for everyday use, but there is one type of encryption that's truly unbreakable: the One Time Pad.
http://www.scubaninja.com/code/c/xor/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_time_pad
Of course, this doesn't protect you from a bunch of guys with guns that want your key...
Yes, it's reassuring that we're being spied on with readily available tools. Does this mean it's a good thing to have men in black looking through your windows and following you wherever you go? I mean if going low rent to troll through data isn't so bad why not boost employment and have a schmoe on every corner? Heck, some in congress proposed giving us a rebate check to help with our fuel bills--why not have an incentive program that gives us cash for every fellow citizen we turn in? The streets would be filled with low tech trolls. We'd become an ubermass of trolls, no one would be safe. Taking a crap in private would become a thing of the past. In fact, we'd all just leave our doors and shades open so as not to provoke the suspicion of our peers. Not only that, but we'd be using our phones to report terrorist activity so that the various phone companies who were aiding in the low pro snooping to begin with would now rake in mega bucks from all those calls from the patriotic. In no time the world would be so much safer, so much more open and honest. Eventually we'd realise the need for spying and war and greed, etc is asinine. We'd all realise the futility of the system as it had come to be and we'd yearn to rid our utopia of the vermin who created this monstrosity to begin with. The Evil would be exposed and it's power would dwindle to nothing more than the power of a scary story or an urban legend. Then we'd all just laugh and laugh at the thought that we ever let such bizarre, insane, paranoid creatures rule our lives. How droll it would seem, indeed, that we who are free to think our thoughts and live our lives should have ever allowed ourselves to think this system was ever meant to help us and not just feed the insanity of the powers that were. The Evil would prove to be it's own worst enemy. From corrupt, greedy, power mad monsters would arise the tools for their own demise. Indeed, it would be us who proved the most powerful net monitoring tool. Hah!
Then one day Santa Claus gave everyone the clap and we all got real sick and died.
The End.
A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog?
I am suspecting that the ISPs who INSISTS the newbie/uninformed windoze users and Mac users install that ISPs crackware CD masquerading as an 'experience enhancing/improving' software tool is really just a Trojan to facilitate later offline decryption.
Just call them up. Make up your own scenarios. But, if LINUX users DON'T need the damned CD, why do windoze and Mac users need it. If you posit that you rebuild your machine every 6 weeks and you always lose your ISPs disk, or broke it by mistake, do you still need it? some of them will say, well, no, not ALWAYS, or no you don't NEED it...
Why is there no lobby against this bald-face lying on the part of ISPs?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's not as absurb as you want it to be mate. Some of the leading cases in US software-copyright come to the conclusion that the legal exemption to have a second, personal copy of copyrighted software (ie, "backup exemption) is only necessary because the computer "copies" the executable code into memory from the hard drive when it runs. You'd have the original software on the hard drive and an illegal "copy" in memory, if not for the exemption.
My first reaction was, "You've got to be farking kidding me."
Judges don't understand technology.
I don't think all the traffic flowing through the internet backbones means what you think it means..!?!
,and translate it back to a USEABLE, SEARCHABLE, ARCHIVABLE database format in REAL-TIME?? Do you know what an OC-192 is???
......
Can you fathom the information processing requirements necessary to split an OC-192 circuit
Now put that on a scale for every major NODE in the country, on every Large Bandwidth provider in the U.S.
DO YOU GET IT YET??? This is no small operation, and for you to dismiss it as another company tossing some monitoring equipment onto their network shows,
a) your LACK of networking knowledge, and
b) that you would just assume allow such an operation to proceed regardless of what Constitutional foundations its shattering
I pity you sir
Was so heavy into my rant that I forgot to include my other two suspicions:
-- the ISPs are getting marketing dollars by deploying the disks, and when each one is installed, it calls back to mshaft to verify that the ISP is entitled to marketing dollars, which then enables mshaft to bolster their OS useage counts (which can be negated or deflated when users successfully log in without the disk ever being installed, which means an employee NOT pushing the disk installation might lose commissions or deprive the ISP of marketing dollars....)
or,
-- the ISPs use the disk to gain access to unwary users' machines, and then use the validated information or sell pieces or all of the information (maybe de-identified?) to "third party partners" and such
As for those damned disks, I say if you SHIP the modem to the subscriber, and it is logically assumed there is no cloning of the MAC address, and the machine is directly connected to the C/M or DSL modem, then WHY WHY WHY on Earth is it a **MUST** that the end user install that disk? WHY?
I guess gates and henchmen are going to put a full-on press against the ISP, now, or again... Sounds like ripe anti-trust/anti-competitive territory.
US Government: This is MORE fodder for you in your quest to put a clamp in ms ass. Use this for ALL it's worth!
Until Linux/Open Source is a genuine WMD or bigger threat to the world than windoze is, I will NOT give up my OS of choice, and nor should any other individual, company, or government....
(There are SOME people who think I'm anti-government, that I'm an evil threat; far from it. I say what I think is right, and I reFUSE to suffer political bullshit just because some politico is afraid of losing eminence or turf or whatever. I call it like I see it. I am anti-effing-stupid-government, not anti-government. But, I suppose someone will try to explain that the two distinctions are by definition functionally equal and therefore I am still "totally" anti-government. WHEW!!!!)
Now, where o-h hwhere are those rit, lith, umm, chlo, umm.... PILLS???!!!!
adjusts EM-shielded strontium-coated tin foil hat...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
What matters is not HOW at&t and friends are monitoring traffic with NSA, but WHY do it at all.
Monitoring net traffic couldnt be easier for government just like it is easy for netizens to access passwordless government computers.
In China the NSA would operate without questions but this is the USA for heavens sake!!
NSA needs to solve issues like who was really behind 911. Once citizens wipe away doubts that 911 was carried out by...ahm...you know who, then we will roll over and get screwed with wiretaps.
I am suspecting that the ISPs who INSISTS the newbie/uninformed windoze users and Mac users install that ISPs crackware CD masquerading as an 'experience enhancing/improving' software tool is really just a Trojan to facilitate later offline decryption.
I seriously doubt this, but it is easy enough to find out. Make a vm of windows and save it. Install the software save it. Take a look at the bits and figure out what has changed. Has it touched any of the encryption libraries or programs? Just copy them off and checksum them even.
But, if LINUX users DON'T need the damned CD, why do windoze and Mac users need it.
They don't of course. Most of those CDs just run a script, some are even easy to look at. In fact, the one time I had to setup a mac for a cable modem I just looked at their script, grabbed the DNS server, mail server, and netmask, etc. from it and input them by hand in my config. It worked just fine. The reason they tell you have to run the CD is because they hire support moneys working minimum wage to read a script into the phone when you call. It is easier for them to tell you to double click a script then walk you through making manual configuration changes.
Could it be...SymAntic Traffic ANalysis?
Now I understand why ATT refuses to use ADSL2+ (24mb/sec downstream). It would be too much data to collect...
You guys might want to check this out: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/new-executive- order/
Bush has signed an executive order that allows the Telcos to lie on their financial statements. It would be almost impossible to prove these programs existed without access to classified information. Another way to prove them, however, would be to detail how much money the telcos receive from the federal government. They are required to report this information to the SEC beecause they are publically traded companies.
Bush has signed an order that allows them to violate securities law. Worse off, he did this just a few days preceeding the USA Today article which implies that they had notice ahead of time that they were about to be exposed.
We are in for a world of hurt people. Say bye bye to the United States of America as we know it. This is fascism by definition.
Right or wrong, abortion is legal in (most of) the U.S. and the government should not take any action against those who seek to undertake acts which are legal.
We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their VOIP calls.
;)
AT&T. Your world, delivered.
AT&T. Your world, delivered to the NSA.
Fixed that for you.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
And I'm sure the ability to share information on VOIP usage and other "tiered internet" buzz-uses appealed to the telcos when aproached about installing this equipment. There has to be a profit angle for the telcos to have agreed to this deployment...
- MM
How long until the government mandates installation of their sniffers at every google pop, every isp, every telco. How soon until the NSA in realtime knows that someone is searching google for something terrorist related. And it doens't matter if we petition our congress to make laws preventing the invasion of privacy, seeing as the president can choose what laws he wants to follow and which ones he wants to break.
We should learn from the examples of fascist countries that've come before and do something about it before these people start taking away liberties that affect us directly, like life.
No, you are both wrong, you have no idea how far down the rabbit hole we already are. These disks contain tiny nanomachines that embed themselves in your skin and change your DNA so that you will only bear Republican children. Of course, the Republicans aren't the Final Masters here, they are nothing more than patsies of the Rand Corporation, who are of course controlled by the Boy Scouts of America, who are under the dominion of the Reverse Vampires. We're through the looking glass, people.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
But there's no reason to accuse them of bugging you or other bogus FUD just because they want PPPoE. Linux doesn't need the disk because it already has PPPoE drivers available - Windows doesn't (or at least didn't), and Linux users can be trusted to type in the configuration commands correctly or hack them until they're working. There probably are some ISPs that like to include spyware, but for most of them it's just making sure that their branding is out there and making sure that the kinds of users who can't get the coffee-cup holder on their PC to stop auto-ejecting at 12:00 do still get connected. Also, except for encrypted payload, the ISPs can see everything from their end of the connection anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
I can send a letter through the US Mail, if anyone but the resipiant opens it, they are a federal criminal.
I think you might wanna wath this movie http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-202332089 0224991194
Let's imagine I'm in charge of internet marketing at a large multinational company. How can I get my hands on some of those lovely Narus logs? That would be a real Google killer.
29 mpg. YMMV.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained through ignorance/stupidity. Or the bottom line.
The reason they want those CDs installed is to make sure your computer is set up "the right way" to minimize technical support calls. And once tech support is needed, they know that the computer is in a specific configuration and it's easier to troubleshoot. It's really that easy. If you don't believe it, put a bridge between the computer and the modem and capture the traffic.
from http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/17050 6_b_Memorandum.htm
"Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))"
Sure they could break one million messages. If they can break one, they can break a million of them.... and, incidentally, if they are only interested in YOUR emails, the don't have to break one million emails... just your few dozen.
;-)
And by the way... you are too sleeping with your Mom no matter what you claim.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal."
There was a blurb on the news about the NSA guy who wants to head the CIA. In adding up his negatives they said that he was behind to the push to get the NSA to adopt off-the-shelf technology instead of relying on home grown, which they said had been a major failure for the NSA, costing it as much or more than in-house stuff and providing lesser capabilities.
I wonder if this product is one of the off-the-shelf wins or losses?
For all of its capabilities, it seems unlikely it can break even DES in real time, and would it be able to recognize, say, an SSH session tunneled via legitimate HTTP packets (not just SSH on port 80, but SSH embedded in HTTP packets)? I've used a Packeteer that was great at "seeing" layer 4/5 traffic regardless of port, but at a certain level of layering you don't really know what you've got.
No! He said he was sleeping with YOUR mom, you insensitive clod.
Sure, if by "most" you mean "three", and if by "block" you mean "monitor, detect, and in some cases, block", sure.
Jesus fucking Christ, where did you learn to read?
As anyone who has ever run an intrusion detection system can tell you, collecting data is easy. Making productive use of it in a timely manner is not a trivial task that still has to be performed by humans. The strain on the NSA's human analysts that these sorts of systems must surely create makes me doubt that anything timely will be coming out from this system. These sorts of systems are quite useful to help understand what happened days, weeks or months ago. However, putting this sort of system to use in a real time way will require an army of analysts which one can not merely conjured up.
When informed of Total Information Awareness, Congress loudly and firmly killed it, but the NSA did it anyway in secret.
This is a scandal of first order. The goal is unconstitutional, the attitude is nuamerican and the means are illegal. This is the kind of shit we fought the Cold War to avoid. I'm furious and you should be too.
As the American Taliban tightens it's grip on your reading, conversations and whereabouts, the terrorists win. A few bandits flying into buildings, even the destruction of an entire American city is not an excuse to destroy the things this country stands for. A few more slips down the slope and you wont be able to tell the difference between the Axis of Evil and home.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Uh... what?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Is that we've been picked on in our lives and now we develope these horrible tools to get back at the world just cause we can, and it can be sold for lots of money to power hungry old people with visions of world domination.
See... be nice to the weird kid folks...
seriously, why do people create tools like this? Is there really a market for it? Who is this market? Law enforcement perhaps, but what right do they have to log everyones doing? We're private citizens, so why is company allowed to develope such spying tools? Isnt this the same as spyware and trojans? Whats the difference between this and a root kit? In the big picture, they are still spying on us, and these are citizen companies making tools to do this. Thats no different than some kid making a trojan to steal info from zombie computres. Its illegal in my eyes.
Why is a company allowed to do this and a teenager with his latest worm/keylogger not?
Their entire company is based on breaking the law, isnt it?
What happened to privacy?
Oh its the net, we're not guarranteed privacy cause its public? bah. Dangerouns line to walk... especially when they're hell bend on making encryption illegal. What privacy will we be allowed to have on the net?
Funny how i said "what privacy will we be allowed to have..."
"who are under the dominion of the Reverse Vampires"
The vampires that love sunlight... and come from Tansylvania?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"What is Aurora?
Aurora is a network-security database that had been used to store Internet traffic data since approximately 2003. The Aurora database contains huge amounts of data acquired by firewalls, routers, honeypots and other devices on AT&T's global IP (Internet Protocol) network and other networks connected to AT&T's network."
Quick! Someone get Google on the phone.
How about we fake the encryptions by sending a pseudo random stream of data (say from Setti@home or one of those protein or DNA sequence) and let them waste time trying to decrypt that...
9 8wjf9saenf9w0 qrji&Y*$NFsr
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
aiunw3r9unwoif98wrjoiwrj982q3ruj892w4rj98wfj98wrj
3w988jwa4erj80(*#@UR*&Yrt0iq32iujk80qwdfj089q3r98
ewf9k90we4rkj8w34tj3e9w8gj
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
In times of war investigatory and related power have always increased. However the American people only allow this during the emergency, Once the emergency is over things return to normal. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, ... they all did things that would only be tolerated during war. The same thing is happening today. Part of what makes America great is that we are able to take powerful measures when necessary but it's just temporary. The power of checks and balances is not that it prevents excess, it is that it corrects excesses over time. In short, the sky is not falling.
To prevent any nonsense about the politicians being in control, the politician won't allow the people to [blah blah]. That is bunk. The people are firmly in control. Politicians only get away with what we *allow* them to get away with. There is a line that when crossed will annoy people enough to go to the polls and vote. Much of the normal idiocy we see our politicians commit falls short of that line. The problem is not really with the politicians, it is with where we place that line. However the fact remains that we place the line, we vote the idiots in or out of office.
By the way, you blew all credibility when you stated a willingness to accept the loss of a city rather than allow, in a time of war, such things as analysis of telephone and internet traffic, etc. Even if we take it further than that, scanning/listening for keywords and starting to record on a "hit", distasteful but in a time of war, especially in the modern technological context, it is probably a good idea. Now in a time of peace things are very different. Again, America has a pretty good track record of undoing the excesses that were necessary during emergencies. The only excesses that are allowed are the ones we tolerate.
If we are at war now, we will never be at peace.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Perhaps!we!need!to!rebuild!a!UUCP!dialup!network.
This got me thinking... according to this link: Handwritten address interpretation :
(emphasis mine.)So, it's only a small step to record all that metadata for every letter sent within the USA. Just have postmasters general submit the day's scan logs to the gov't for review for possible terrorist links, and, by the way, archive all th information received. This information could include:
So, maybe you were just joking, but from what I've seen lately, I'd have to suspect that this may already in place... can anyone corroborate this?
If anyone thinks that gov'ts don't spy and that the right guaranteed in the Constitution/Bill of Rights are always upheld you probably believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Part of living in a big, sometimes dangerous world full of different kinds of people, is that gov'ts spy and break laws. I know that, I just don't want to see it. Just like hot dogs, I love them but I don't want to see them made.
The real worry is that the NSA were so sloppy or lazy or just didn't care enough to hide what they were doing. The NSA is in the spy and secrets biz. If some sys admin at the phone company can out a NSA mission, then those agents need to be transfered to a listening station in the arctic circle.
When I switched from a D-Link router to a Linksys, I misspelt my PPPoE password by one letter. I tried hacking the D-Link config file but no luck - unmasking the password fields on the browser didn't reveal anything either. Tutorials on the net said I needed 2 computers to monitor the traffic between the router and the DSL modem.
After experimenting for a while, I started a PPPoE and a CHAP server on my computer, fired up Ethereal, connected it to the WAN port on my D-Link, and resetted the D-Link. Presto, login and password in plaintext. Saved me a LOT of headache going through customer service.
Why is anyone shocked that the internet is under surveilance? It originated as a DOD project. It's just coming full circle back to where it began.
I think it is time to start a movement to build encryption into all communications on the internet as a default user option.
Us geeks need to promote the use of web anonymizers through the use of
a easy net scape plug-in and e-mail encryption by writing plug-in / managers for standard clients including outlook.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
No need really. Once we start a good ole nuke exchange, you won't really care. :) WW3...it will be over in a snap.
Cheers