Slashdot Mirror
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!
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 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.
Except that people aren't. I read in TIME magazine last night that over 50% of the people interviewed think that the NSA call database is justified in the War On Terror (TM). Most people will only care if it influences thier ability to watch American Idol, and if not, oh well.
'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
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?
That and they spend hundreds of millions on less complex tools that never materialize into a real application.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
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.
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!
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
The Big Brother 1000.
*I don't watch American Idol. Really!
Most people will only care if it influences thier ability to watch American Idol, and if not, oh well.
Oh, but it does affect American Idol. The votes are handled via a call-in system. The NSA now has a record of who you voted for!
This guy's the limit!
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?
I don't care if they were running tcpdump...it doesn't make it any less troublesome.
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.
Was the article getting those numbers from Time's own poll, or the recently released telephone poll of 502 (IIRC) Americans which there are plenty of problems with? This is exactly why the saying "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is applicable. This single - IMHO flawed - poll is being used at every media outlet to show people there isn't a problem and 'see, most Americans think this is ok so You Should Too.'
Well that's not what democracy is about, it's not about groupthink, otherwise there would be no wheelchair access to most places, plenty of towns would probably still have public buildings segregated by race/class/religion, etc, etc. Majority - or mob - rule is something that democracy tries to prevent, just because the majority thinks one way does not mean they are right. And yet people allow themselves to be coerced by one stupid poll after another. Let's face it, anyone who is willing to answer a 50 question telephone poll is likely not terribly interested in their privacy, that fact alone should invalidate the poll as it introduces an unmeasurable - but likely significant - bias. My thought is that a more thorough, in-person poll with a larger sampling will show that in fact most Americans don't think this program is ok. But until such a less biased poll is conducted then all that will be referenced is this stupid poll that forwards the government's agenda. And if I'm proven wrong then so be it, in that case then this poll should no longer be quoted to assauge people's fears of this domestic spying program, but should be used as an alarm that this country is asleep! The populace needs to be woken up. Until 100% of the people are screaming mad at a warrantless datamining/spying program undertaken by the government against anyone and everyone regardless of guilt, then it means we have some educating to do! You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records? Because you can't see it? Because "it doesn't affect me"? If nothing else the whole program is stupid because the government is looking for a needle in a haystack in these communications and thus far all their efforts are doing is adding more hay! Some of the 9-11 hijackers' calls were intercepted before 9-11, but they weren't translated in time to be of any use. Now we're expected to believe that fewer agents sifting through more data will somehow prevent another attack of the same sort? Laughable if it weren't so damn unfunny.
[/rant]
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
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
>Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
True in general, but does it apply to this program?
Former NSA analyst Ira Winkler has said in public that it's reducing security, and if you were designing a system with the goal of increasing security, you wouldn't spy on hundreds of millions of people in the hope of catching some of the hundreds of terrorists.
And if I call 2 people, and ask them "Do you approve of the government spying on you" and one hangs up, the other says No, I can say "50% of people polled were not against spying".
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Was the article getting those numbers from Time's own poll, or the recently released telephone poll of 502 (IIRC) Americans which there are plenty of problems with? This is exactly why the saying "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is applicable.
Is doesn't matter if the polls are inaccurate.... What is the majority of the masses *believe* the poll? They will change their opinions if they think that idea "X" is generally supported. Remember, most of the registered voters didn't even vote!
This is just an old marketing trick... Present the *image* that something is popular and that's what it will become (bandwagon advertising).
So the numbers that 60% of Americans would give up every constitutional right for the war on terrorism doesn't even matter.... What really matters is that 75% of Americans, upon hearing the 60% number, **WILL** give up their rights.
THAT's the real problem.
No it isn't. Doesn't anyone realize time is playing against society. Slow paced change isn't really going to help society because by the time we get around to it, it is going to be too late. By the time society clues in that there is a problem it'll be just before the nurse says "It is time for your 3 pm probing to make sure you've been sticking to your special diet".
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
Still, the amount of traffic these things can handle is pretty impressive.
So how do I get a job in that division of AT&T??? :-D
Join the NSA
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
It's legal for you to send packets over network connections owned and operated by third parties. If you have an expectation of privacy for data being handled by parties you have no relationship with, you're being unreasonable.
This is not necessarily so. First, many technologies apply a strong metaphor to an existing service, even going so far as to assure customers they won't be able to tell the difference. VoIP is the primary consideration here, but e-mail is also a candidate. It is illegal for someone to look in the mail messages you send, so most people (knowing nothing of the technology involved) assume the same is true for e-mail. Thus they have an expectation. If you explain to them it is more like a postcard, most will understand, but they won't understand why their online bills don't have a envelope around them for privacy when their offline bills do. Also, more and more networks are converging. How much POTS traffic made via regular phones runs over the IP network? Try arguing in front a a jury that the difference between whether AT&T does it at the switching station or an individual does it with their server decides whether or not eavesdropping without a warrant is legal.
Truthfully, for the average user there probably is an expectation of privacy, partially because of laws passed to protect phone and regular mail communication that have not been extended to the internet equivalents.
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
but you CAN leave the KGB or NSA or mafia, they all have early retirement programs
The real problem is that the American public is not closely following the story, and are getting limited and misleading information from many sources. Common really :)
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.
Anyone who blindly changes their mind over a poll with a slim majority difference deserves what they get. Unfortunately for the rest of us we'll be getting it too. :-/
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
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
"I read in TIME magazine last night that over 50% of the people interviewed think that the NSA call database is justified in the War On Terror "
:)
I am not buying that. I do not believe that 50% of an average cross-section of Americans would be ok with domestic spying. How can this be when only 29% approve of Dubya? Someone is lying.
I admit, in the past I WAS paranoid. However, since I now have proof the NSA is spying on me, I am just plain right. The rest of ya'll who do not believe in the conspiracy, you are now paranoid.
Fo Shizzle!
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
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.
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"
So let's do something about it, I'm all for getting some action done instead of just bitching about things on the internet, because lets face it, its easy for politicians to ignore objectors if they don't feel threatened by them. If you have any suggestions on something we can actually do or if you wanna help do something about it, we should start now.
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"
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.
I posed this question last time:
What is the appropriate response, and who has the fortitude to stand up and see it through? This is to the point where you can't just go off willy-nilly and throw a stink bomb somewhere and hope it changes. It needs planning, but its also something that has to get beyond the "talking" stage. Someone needs to step forward and take a stance in the US or I can almost see them becoming completely isolated as no one would want to deal with them anymore.
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.
These are my feelings exactly, I just don't see anyone caring about it beyond the Slashdot forums, online games (of all places!) and select other forums, plus maybe one or two people I know. I think the people who feel this way like you and I should organize a community to try to brainstorm ideas if nothing else though. Like I said somewhere on here, the EFF is nice but theres only so much that can be done through the legal system when that is the system that is being subverted.
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.
I say we let nature take it's course. Let's just forget about it, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. Who's gonna fight (and win) against the NSA??? Who *can*?? Seriously. Laws are being broken at the top of the chain here, and the things people are discovering and trying to uncover are being held back due to "National Security concerns" and "If this is released it will help the terrorists hurt America".
Fuck it. It's not like 90% of the fucking US cares about every action being monitored anyway. It's not like 90% of the fucking US even UNDERSTANDS what's going on. When you work with people whos' eyes glaze over when you ask them to drop to a command prompt, do you really think they're gonna understand anything about major Internet backbone engineering and fiber optic splitter technology??? Yeah, fucking, right.
Here's my response:
FUCK YOU, NSA. FUCK YOU, AT&T. How DARE you violate our right to human privacy. You should be ashamed of yourselves for what you're doing, and if the bulk of the American people understood what you were doing to them on a daily basis they'd start a civil war.
That's all we can do. They're "better" than us; they're "above" us in every aspect of the word besides physically. What can we do, legally, that would change a mother fucking thing? Nothing.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
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.
Well, sort of. This device is (I believe) a modified version of what the ISPs have been using for a long time to let them accurately bill people for the services they offer and negotiate peering agreements and QoS contracts.
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.
Whoa, whoa, whoa there cowboy! Now I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but you're making some pretty big and likely unwarranted leaps here. A whole lot of the traffic shaping, modeling, and balancing technology came out of Israel. The university there had a top notch network engineering program with a lot of smart people and patents coming out of it. Most moved to the US, where they could make money off of the .com boom and the aftermath. I know because I work with one of the professors who came over here to do that and let me tell you, he giggles way to much to be a mossad agent. I imagine anyone working in high-tech in Israel probably did some work for the military, especially if they were in academia.
And one of the directors on the board happens to be an "ex-" NSA guy...
So? I'm sure it helped them get the contract, and maybe helped them decide on the feature set. This is very common in the security industry. The company I work for has ex Microsoft people and ex-Cisco people. Surprise, surprise we sell to both of them. Another company we do a lot business with has ex Naval intelligence and NSA people. Guess who two of their big customers are? That is just the way the industry works. If you know people, you have an in and and often an advocate who helps to make the sale.
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.
The reality is, some people found a niche and they filled it. This same type of functionality is needed for billing services and compliance with a number of government acts regarding lawful intercept, financing, security, and privacy assurance. Now maybe the NSA or AT&T requested added features to make this sort of activity easier. Maybe Narus came up with them on its own and sold them on it.
I certainly think it is being misused and in a way that violates the founding principals of our government. That does not mean it is some grand conspiracy and running off half-cocked spouting this sort of unsupportable nonsense isn't helping anything. All it is doing is reducing the credibility of those who argue to have this sort of thing stopped and distracting people from the real issue.
..or is that your intention? You certainly do enough rabble rousing and insulting. If you really want to help, stick to the facts, not the wild speculation.
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
You're absolutely right if you're talking about what we can do on the internet (well not absolutely, but I don't even want to talk about the challenges of getting technically illiterate people aquainted with things like anonet). We need to do something outside of slashdot and message boards. If we could organize all the people who feel so strongly on the net and then make a real world appearance, it might actually have an affect, and its better than sitting on our asses and bitching.
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
You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records?
How about some other examples:
* You're interviewed once a week to see who you've talked to. (polygraph not optional...)
* All of your trash is tagged and sent in for inspection.
* Cameras and microphones are installed outside your front door to record your activity.
These would be considered unacceptable. (Except for the last one in the UK, apparently.)
But consider where things are going. In about a decade it will probably be possible to process all phone audio in real time. In about 20 years active brain scan technology should make foolproof real time lie detection possible. (It's almost there now, just not real time.) In 50 years it should be easy to robotically sift through everyone's trash, recognize, categorize, and catalog the contents.
The question is whether we'll want to do these things, not whether we'll be able. How we react now will affect the decisions of future generations...
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.
Gotta say I completely disagree with the Troll rating. Thanks for the tidbits.... See, he lost me over Immigration a year and a half ago. Then news of this shite started coming out, and well. Futch 'em. I'm not voting for a single mofo encumbant this year, even if they are Republicans. If I have to vote against the party, so be it.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
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.
The rest of ya'll who do not believe in the conspiracy, you are now paranoid. :)
No, they're not paranoid because it's not paranoia when they really ARE out to get you. What they are is complacent, and excessive complacency usually comes back to bite one in the ass.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
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.
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.
1) It's not a "modified" version of anything. They built it for the specific purpose of traffic analysis which also happens to be what you use for wiretapping. Read their description of the product.
2) I'm perfectly well aware that Israel has a high-tech industry. If you would look up the issue via Google, you will find that the Israeli military - including the Mossad - directly supports and cultivates that industry. They have a specific program to do that which has a specific name and is run by a specific member of the Israeli military. They do this because it has become obvious to them that the best way to spy on everybody is to make the hardware and software that every country uses to spy on everybody. I am basing this on the KNOWN FACT that an Israeli company formerly in charge of the DoJ's wiretapping efforts was CAUGHT providing wiretapping information to drug dealers in Los Angeles, and that the FBI was seriously concerned over how much access to wiretap info the company - and by extension, Israel - actually had.
3) So the fact that an NSA man is running the company doesn't impress you? And to compare that with the ordinary fact that people from various tech companies serve on each other's board is disinguous at best. An NSA man is on that board NOT because of his technical expertise but because the NSA knows how valuable that hardware is for spying on people, Anybody who can't figure that out is a moron.
4) I repeat, this device was built and sold for one purpose only - spying. Any additional revenue the company gets from using it for other purposes is a perk and a cover for its real purpose.
5) You think it's being misused, but you don't think it's a "conspiracy". Gee, I guess you figure they just "misused" it by ACCIDENT?
You're just another fool that bends over and takes it from the government because you don't have the balls to call them on it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Stupid gutless
Let the government do what it wants to you. You're not Americans, you're punks. Brainless, ballless, juvenile punks. You bent over for Gates, you bent over for Bush, and you probably bend over for Oprah.
Now rate THIS Troll, morons.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It's not a "modified" version of anything. They built it for the specific purpose of traffic analysis which also happens to be what you use for wiretapping. Read their description of the product.
Please, they started out building products that detected various layer 7 and 4 traffic types for purposes of network mapping and billing, before moving on to deeper packet inspection. They built upon this existing technology to create their inspection system. It is one small step from looking a packet and saying, "yup this is SMTP" to saying "yup, this is e-mail containing the phrase 'jihad'."
I'm perfectly well aware that Israel has a high-tech industry.
So what makes you think the NSA helped develop any of this then? All you have is speculation.
An NSA man is on that board NOT because of his technical expertise but because the NSA knows how valuable that hardware is for spying on people, Anybody who can't figure that out is a moron.
Please. Half of the people in government jobs eventually migrate to the public sector and make a lot more money. This is not because of their technical knowledge, it is because of their contacts and knowledge of the system. The main reason to hire someone from the NSA to work for you is they know all the people likely to be doing the buying. They golf together and they go to strip clubs together. They enable sales. It is about money, not a conspiracy to control the public company as some sort of front. If it was, you wouldn't know they were ever in the NSA.
I repeat, this device was built and sold for one purpose only - spying. Any additional revenue the company gets from using it for other purposes is a perk and a cover for its real purpose.
AT&T is one of how many of their customers? Most are legitimately using it for traffic analysis and billing. Claiming they get secret kickbacks from the NSA or they are secretly controlled by the NSA is fine, but if you don't have any evidence to support that, it is just conjecture. You don't know, and claiming you do just puts your credibility on the whole issue in the crapper. If you yell "fire" in a theater and want to save lives, don't follow it up with a rant about how it's all part of an MPAA plot to get you to pay twice. Otherwise, people will just think you're a nutjob.
You think it's being misused, but you don't think it's a "conspiracy". Gee, I guess you figure they just "misused" it by ACCIDENT?
No, I think the NSA knew full well what it was doing. I think Narus considered the NSA as a potential source of revenue when they were allocating their engineering effort. I don't, however, see as any evidence they had any motivation other than legitimate profit in building it. Why should the NSA be secretly involved? They can get the same results by just letting the market supply them with tools and misusing them.
You're just another fool that bends over and takes it from the government because you don't have the balls to call them on it.
You're just another fool that thinks a persuasive argument unnecessarily includes wild conjecture and unsupported accusations. You're also the kind of fool who will do more harm to curbing government abuses than good, by being so irrational and vitriolic that no one wants to be associated with you or any cause you are advocating. Your rabid and wild advocacy for this issue is enough to make some people assume the government did nothing wrong, simply because they will assume all proof to the contrary came from "some wackjob conspiracy nut" like yourself. Maybe there is a conspiracy, but if you don't have any evidence of it, shut the hell up already and stick to the real, proven issue.
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
You've haven't proved anything but what a sucker you are.
I don't need "evidence", as you put it - I need only look at what IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
You can't see anything because you don't want to see it.
It's that simple.
It's pointless discussing it with you for the simple reason that you're a sucker.
As more and more of the facts come out, eventually it will be clear what really happened. It may take another ten years, but eventually someone like Bamford will write a book about it and you'll look like an idiot for believing the press releases and corporate spin.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I don't need "evidence", as you put it - I need only look at what IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.
And this exactly what makes you lack credibility and more of a liability than an asset for affecting change in the government on this issue. A rational person makes decisions based upon facts and admits they don't know when they have no facts. There is no reason to make assertions about what you don't know to convey to others what happened that is unethical, un-American, and corrupt here. Still you insist on making those assertions and demonstrating your irrationality.
It may take another ten years, but eventually someone like Bamford will write a book about it and you'll look like an idiot for believing the press releases and corporate spin.
No one ever looks like an idiot for admitting they don't know the facts of something they have no way of obtaining facts about. Maybe there is some grand conspiracy, maybe there isn't. It seems far-fetched to me, since there is no motive in this case. In any case, right now I look and am a rational person discussing facts. You seem to be an irrational person spouting conjecture with nothing to back it up. I can educate people and motivate them to press for reform. You can make them look for an excuse to be elsewhere and believe that anyone discussing the issue is some wacko. Which of us is of more benefit to society?
B3v and Charlie, who are you, who do you think I am, and what's an FTA board?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.