Slashdot Mirror
Inside PRISM: Why the Government Hates Encryption
Lauren Weinstein writes "Now, what's really going on with PRISM? The government admits that the program exists, but says it is being 'mischaracterized' in significant ways (always a risk with secret projects sucking up information about your citizens' personal lives). The Internet firms named in the leaked documents are denying that they have provided 'back doors' to the government for data access. Who is telling the truth? Likely both. Based on previous information and the new leaks, we can make some pretty logical guesses about the actual shape of all this. Here's my take."
I work for the government, and we use commercial products to encrypt most everything.
Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.
The government admits that the program exists, but says it is being 'mischaracterized' in significant ways ... The Internet firms named in the leaked documents are denying that they have provided 'back doors' to the government for data access. Who is telling the truth? Likely both.
Considering that the government is not saying anything in particular, it is easy to tell the truth here. When they defend the program as a "crucial tool in war on terrorism", that's quite possibly the honest truth since neither that "war" nor "terrorism" has been defined to any degree. Thus anything could be a crucial tool.
that if our government really has all of this data then China has it too
What about the front door? Did anyone denied access to the front door? What about any door? What about the room? Did anyone, explicitly denied any kind of access?
There's always the chance that NSA has Google employees on its payroll that are tasked with secretly handing off data. They could even be there under a verbal handshake agreement with Google management, giving Google plausible deniability in case they are ever discovered: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that data gathering is going on in here!"
Then everyone is happy - the NSA gets their data, and Google can legitimately say that "they" are not handing over data to the NSA.
And since secret FISA orders can apparently compel anyone to do just about anything and keep it a secret, there's nothing illegal about it.
It's likely to be dpi - and the NSA has spent time brute forcing the ssl - or obtained it as a "business record"
zuckerburg said he doesnt give the government "direct access" to its servers, that doesnt mean that it doesnt give them access. I am sure there will be more "legal speak" in the days to come
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! You voted for this at least six times since it was officially made legal. And no doubt you will approve again in the next election.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The article makes a big deal about ubiquitous encryption eventually weakening these types of surveillance tools, but if the government has the ability to do deep packet inspection at the ISP or backbone level couldn't they see the negotiation of encryption keys between client and server and decrypt the data?
I work for the government, and we use commercial products to encrypt most everything.
what they're talking about here is when government needs to spy on citizens. Government harts encryption because it means they have to get off of their overpaid fat asses and actually work.
You know, it's much easier to listen in on a citizen and see if they maybe committing a crime than actually getting evidence and building a case.
Because you see, Government workers only work from 12 - 1 with a one hour lunch break and they need all the breaks they can get - like eliminating the Fourth Amendment.
If they were really qualified, they'd get a real job. Which may explain why some third world douchebags got around the US' surveillance - The FBI, NSA, CIA are just too stupid, moronic, retarded to actually work within the Constitution of the United States of America and therefore have to violate it in order to do - attempt - their job.
If they were truly smart, they could work within the confines of the Constitution. But they can't - they are stupid. The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat because our security services are stupid.
Security services have to eliminate basic freedoms to achieve their goals; which means they are morons.
QED.
I'm thinking of being a criminal because they are too stupid to catch me and I got student loans to pay off.
If they got lucky and catch me, well, they'd just pay me to consult and make them look good.
Morons.
POOR bPRIORITIES, to happen. My
The companies denied knowing a code name (PRISM) and using a specific method for giving data to the gov't (backdoors). They didn't deny participating in a program to give data to the government. ABC News has a good analysis of their statements:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nsa-prism-dissecting-technology-companies-adamant-denial-involvement/story?id=19350095
The current US government has a complete disregard for the rights of its citizenry. Name a single Bill of Rights amendment that remains in full efffect. Go on... Name just one. Secret courts? DNA collection? "Free speech zones"? Compulsory self-incrimination? State imposed limitations to the 2nd amendment (which in effect guts the 10th, commerce clause aside)?
In this case - Just straight up fuck the government. No sane reading of the rights guaranteed us by the constitution allows for such a tortured interpretation. And I don't care how you use it Barry O - I care that you collect it in the first place. The constitution doesn't say "we can stop by and take a look around your place as long as we don't press charges", it says "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized". Doesn't take a legal scholar to parse that, you worthless floaters atop the DC sewers!
/ For those who would inevitably bring up the 3rd amendment - We lost that one over a century ago - Thanks, Mr. Lincoln! They just haven't had a reason to casually disregard it in the past century, but make no mistake, they would (again) in a heartbeat.
FTA:
If we continue to permit this, the ultimate fault and blame will not be with our government or our leaders, but rather with ourselves.
However, it's not a future problem anymore. We already are to blame.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A front door is not, after all, a back door.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So...what you're saying, is that this government is effectively an anti-US government?
I am John Hurt.
If you want to make a persuasive argument, or to seem like an honest broker of the facts, please don't insert idiotic, manipulative, pre-judging rhetoric in your writing. When three words in you have "The Soviet Surveillance States of America", your credibility takes a large hit with those who don't already agree with you (but you end up getting validated by the people who do, rewarding your behavior, and repeating it). Please re-join us in the real world, and make your points here, instead.
Come on, get everyone to pay their "fair share".
Trust me - that money will be used only for GOOD purposes!
Sarcasm aside, maybe mauve is named that way because with all the data they collect they can break the populace down to its constituent colors.
Silence is a state of mime.
Uv gurer AFN naq Hapyr Fnz! Tb shpx lbhefryirf!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I can see this easily with respect to the major vendors ESPECIALLY CISCO and MICROSOFT, building back doors into all of their products.
This in my opinion will be a huge boost for open source software and hardware where you can analyse the entire system from top to bottom and verify its security integrity.
One thing is for sure, history paints a very bleak future if this sort of thing is allowed to continue.
Forget about patent trolls and SCO and everything else that has tried to destroy the only meaningful computer science research in my opinion that has been happening in the last 15 years is all around open source, and specifically LINUX and nothing else.
What happens if they decide only closed proprietary binaries can be used for all communications and open source is illegal?
Sound far fetched?
I don't think so, if the government decides to deploy a small tactical nuke in a city, and then use that crisis to solidify its power claiming to keep you all safe, all open source research can only be done under a license from the government and anyone found with open computing systems we can't directly monitor will go to prison.
This is the norm in China right now, and they didn't even need a crisis. I would like to point out to, that CISCO is the single most culpable company in the world that has created these sorts of police state networks, and they did it for cash. On a daily basis, people are hunted down, murdered, butchered and killed all thanks to CISCO tracking systems built specifically for the Chinese government.
My friends 10 years ago said that would never happen because CISCO was "too nice" and they would never do such a thing.
Likewise, imagine a VERY plausible scenario where a nuke strike orchestrated by a few companies, or government people could do for the IP industry where ONLY CISCO products are licensed by the government and can be used to "KEEP YOU SAFE".
The amount of dollars we are talking about is gigantic and easily worth destroying one or two US cities like New York or Chicago or even both to risk the force required to take ALL of the telecommunications markets.
It only two TWO buildings to take the USA military budget into the mega multiple TRILLIONS with ENDLESS WAR now. What do you think these global elite could get with two nuked America cities?
Think about all of the lawlessness that isn't even being reported on the TV news channels like the Cartoon News Network (CNN...Fox News etc...) you come to realise just how corrupt the government is. IRS actually targeting people for their religious, political views, news reporters who don't tow the line being sent to jail.
It doesn't sound to far fetched to me.
We all know how this will end, and it will end very badly, if anyone is left after the end of this "ENDLESS WAR" the enemy is "EVERYWHERE".
Yeah, well that enemy is YOU my friend.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
That one about quartering troops?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! You voted for this at least six times since it was officially made legal. And no doubt you will approve again in the next election.
Guilty.
I voted for Obama in the last election and the Libertarian candidate (whatever his name was) in 2008.
I'm in Georgia - US of A.
Back in 2008, every single Black person who could vote was out to vote for Obama. And he lost Georgia in '08 and in '12. Georgia is Republican State with a Capital 'R'.
I did what _I_ could do. I did what _I_ thought was right.
I was hoping the Black dude to stick it to the Man and he turned out to be the Man.
WTF are we going to do?!
It's great and all - and I'm sure it makes YOU fell good to say shit like "Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! " - but am _I_ supposed to do?
Fucking tell me! Tellme !
Armed revolt?
So, I'm going to quite my job, fight the Government and in the meantime, the bank will foreclose on my house, put my student loans into collections, freeze my bank accounts, and I'm supposed to fight?
I'm a fucking serf Dude! I DID what I was supposed to do - what corporate America - what the fucking asshole hiring managers -demand I do - I AM powerless to do anything! I have TRIED mother fucker! I AM trying when I can but the thing is, there are too many people who have bought the fucking propaganda! We see it here all the time.
There are a lot more than 1.5% of us who didn't vote for the US government, starting with almost everyone outside the US, who the US Powers That Be don't much seem to care about alienating this week even if we're all "allies". This whole mess is exposing the fundamental problems of international legal frameworks when it comes to commercial and intelligence practice.
For example, it's now going to be very awkward for US businesses that deal with lots of personal information about people from Europe -- where data protection laws are much stronger than in the US -- to explain how they are both complying with those laws and complying with the US government harvesting data. Plenty of people have noticed the paradox in the past and turned a blind eye or left it to the EU bureaucrats to figure out how to deal with it quietly, but somehow I doubt that's going to fly for much longer at this point.
Things are about to get very awkward for any EU companies that send data over to US services covered by the Safe Harbor rules as well, because if it's clear that Safe Harbor doesn't really protect data to European standards because the US government freely admits it can get to it anyway, then almost by definition it's going to become illegal to use all those US-based services from the EU. If that actually became a real thing, the economic consequences would be... unpleasant.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
As opposed to wich US government? The one that selectively denied said citizenry and all but wiped out native populations? Upheld legal slavery past just about everyone else in the western civilization? Put citizens of Japanese decent into concentration camps and consfiscated their property? I think you need a history lesson.
I've always assumed anything I've posted, including E-mail or said is public knowledge.
Way back when... The usenet group knew or took for granted that every message
went through NSA, at the time is was no big deal just be a backbone and filter for words
or phrases. The practice was referred to as the eight words, while I forget them, one or more of the
eight words were sure to get your post sidelined and read.
As for back doors these have been in place for a long time, Microsoft's Firewall will
allow trusted parties to slip right through. There was a time these were talked about
in the open.
ToS and privacy policies tell you what information is being collected and what it's used
for, Angry birds has one line that says any amount of your data will "go overseas".
The game appropriately named "Jewel link!" one of many free games put out by Ezjoy Network
has no ToS or privacy policy and requires every permission Android has. Ezjoy Network can make
a copy of your entire system if they want as they've promised nothing, which you accepted when installed.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ezjoynetwork.jewelslink&feature=search_result
paste m.ezjoygame.com into google and watch what happens. "You get a Google Instant is unavailable. Press Enter to search"
message but you can learn more here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/186645?form=bb&hl=en
Google isn't all the Innocent, recently Google Play restricted any program that interferes with
the data capture of another program, blocking programs like Adaway, or any number of programs
that blocked sites (a HOSTS file) or change permissions.
Why so surprised?
Guess that's not the goto site anymore.
Seriously this Yankee madness really needs to stop. Guess what? No representation in our government. Again. Are we really going to be scared by more delusions and crippling incompetence? What makes me so radically different from the bureaucrat working for a big company or the US government? How did these groups earn their positions? It's just sad how disconnected and alienated everyone is from each other. The only hope we have in America is that we keep our innovation and technology more advanced than everyone else. If we don't have that, forget it. What's troubling is that instead of adapting to the implications of our new technologies, we create positions and jobs that don't actually help the economy and are entirely selfish. And not selfish in a good way, but selfish in a bad way that means rewards being created from nothing that double dip right back to the beneficiary. Only significant and clear demand of what we actually want will help. Problem is, whenever anyone suggests anything like proportional voting, direct democracy, better safety conditions, teleworking, etc these will invariably be placed in the hands of individuals who have no business or ability doing this. We can talk forever about how this comes about, but a lot of it has to do with monopolies. I'm not just talking about monopolies on a large scale, it's about monopolies on what we do everyday. Many full-time positions really don't need to be full time, but are made full-time to start the silly game. Because everyone's assumption is that x-hour workday is best for productivity! Look at the numbers! If there is anything I've learned, people will do anything in their power to fudge numbers. Eventually, if there are enough full time positions in the company, there are people who are utterly disconnected from each other in what they do. This only breeds unnecessary drama which we are indoctrinated to accept and even appreciate through TV, media, and the whole three-ring circus. This is already too long; the end message is that the jobs that we do today are partly if not completely subjective in their scope and no one is really ready to accept that reality. It's made worse when people feel like they can only "make a difference" when they have this illusory monopoly on something. In this case, Obama is indicating that he can "make a difference" because "look we can have a complete monopoly on the control of this information! Isn't that great!?" No, it's not great, it is in fact worse than what we have now. Same goes for the rest of the political landscape, just a whole hoard of people with these intentions that weaken ourselves and the people we love. If there's one thing I'd want out of the lot is that they write down their intentions and then we get to grade them on it.
"In other words, what we're likely talking about with PRISM isn't a "back door" for rummaging around through data in an uncontrolled manner, but rather a technical and legal protocol for the government to quickly gain access to specific data under order when the firm involved agrees that the order is valid and chooses not to challenge it."
Well, we know that at least with Verizon that court order was "give me all your data". I think Weinstein is trying too hard to sound reasonable. Just trawling all text communications would be much easier than building a sophisticated system to hand off, piece-meal, data. And it's more inline with what NSA has always done... massive trawling of data. They're not the FBI. These are the same people who built Echelon, which we _know_ is a system for massive data trawling of satellite and radio communications.
If you define the problem as capturing, byte-for-byte, all e-mail traffic, then, sure it sounds kind hard. But they don't need byte-for-byte accuracy; they don't need to capture every, single message. Again, they're not the FBI, and they're not compiling folders of evidence to deliver up to a court. Their metric of success is capturing exactly as much data as they can. That's it.
What does Weinstein think the NSA does with their data facilites? 65MW in Utah. 60MW in their new Maryland facility. Ft. Meade data center? Greenbelt HQ? Elsewhere? The scale of their operations is of the same order as Google.
If this is what the government is doing to protect me, I don't want to be protected anymore. I'll take my own chances.
I would rather be dead to a terrorist bomb than live in 1984.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
I err on the side of citizen freedom - I don't want the government listening to my phone calls. spying on my internet traffic or decrypting my PC.
However... Fellow citizens who feel this way must understand the price - You have to understand that the 'price of freedom' is that, from time to time, extremely rare events will occur where people will die. Planes and trains will be bombed. Kids will be blown up. One day a dirty or chemical bomb might go off in a big city.
You can't on the one hand say "Don't read my mail!" and then on the other hand complain if the government fails to detect a terror cell operating in Sioux City. If you want to live in a nanny-state bubble well loss of freedom is the price.
We are all political prisoners now, the rest who do not care only think that they are free. Every male should grow a full beard and appropriate head covering and every female should dress modestly. It's like WW2 Denmark stood on its head. Make everyone look like the target to confuse the invaders (our own government). If everyone is regarded a terrorist (no difference between citizen and non-citizen), perhaps everyone should rub in that perception with a pound of salt.
Sorry, I've always thought Lauren Weinstein was an idiot, and now it's been confirmed. Google doesn't have to give the NSA access, the NSA will just take it. You're a moron if you think there's anything other than the constitution stopping the feds from doing whatever the hell they want. They have more money than any other organization on earth by several orders of magnitude. If the government does not respect the constitution in one way, why would they respect it in any other? If they are already packet capturing all of our traffic, is steeling API access to Googles databases any worse? As far as technical ability goes, all they would have had to do is bribe a couple of high level, psychologically profiled DBAs with talk of patriotism or telling their wives about their boyfriends and they're in.
If the federal government thinks it can fire a hellfire missile from a drone and kill a US citizen without evidence, trial or judicial oversight, then reading our email is a joke to them. It's an easy thing to do, they think they are righteous in their attempts and they have endless resources... OF COURSE THEY'RE DOING IT. The idea that Larry Page would have any fucking clue is a joke. "yes, lets makes sure some celebrities know about our evil plan!"
The price of freedom is not that bombings and shootings will happen, that's just life. Safety can happen with freedom and a lack of safety can happen with a lack of freedom. Indeed I'd go as far as to say there's no real correlation between freedom and these happenings, after all, you look at perhaps the least-free places of all: prisons and you still see murder and rape.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The government probably hired out a lot of this work to contractors who were like, "Yeah, we've got direct feeds from microsoft, google, yahoo... and paypa... umm, pal...talk. That'll be $100M please."
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Do you really think the constitution is limiting these people? The constitution is long gone, demolished by the supreme court and by those who swore to protect it. All the constitution is used for is to give Americans an illusion that we're free, just like the constitution of North Korea claims to give human rights to its citizens.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I always wanted to live in a society inspired by the book 1984. And to a lesser extent, Fahrenheit 451, Das Kapital, and Animal Farm.
I look forward to knowing that my new X-Box will be spying on me 24/7, that nothing I do is secret, that anything I post on the internet can and will be used against me at any time, that the police can beat me senseless for recording (or attempting to record) them on a camera, that the US Government is insanely corrupt and isn't held accountable by anyone, any entity, or the American people. Am I wearing a tinfoil hat? Maybe...
Am I delusional?
Thank you, Timothy, for bringing us the Lauren Weinstein hour, sponsored by... Lauren Weinstein.
Obama's comments in a 'open debate' session today constitute Perjury.
Spying on Americans
But that's not true, IF you can analyze or capture that amount of data making analysis trivial - catch everything, sift it all.
That's my take.
From the FISA warrant, we can see that ALL data on EVERYONE is funnelled into a big NSA database, using the FBI as a conduit.
Once the data is in there, there is no search warrant, anyone of them can run a query on that data, its the data seized in a crime (suspected terrorism). THERE IS NO DOOR!
Even the Prism system, its a web interface, the agent (we learned this from Petraeous incident) clicks 'Yes' to does he have a warrant and promises to only stick to the limits of the warrant. He then goes searching, in this case it went into the private emails of various Generals based on Google login data.
So the door is open, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. all get immunity, they don't care if what was done was legal, its COMPLETELY UNIMPORTANT, post 2007 immunity law.
But you miss the bigger picture here, FBI is the conduit, FISA never turns down requests. It grants access to PRISM, all you private emails, pictures, links, files, calenders, spreadsheets, all get funnelled down to the NSA, where they're available for warrantless search at the whim of anyone in government.
NO DOOR, NOT ONE
Representatives of Microsoft may be hanging out on the social news site voting up positive comments about the Xbox One, voting down negative comments and adding pro-Xbox comments of their own, Misty Silver says.
While at Microsoft for a meeting, Misty Silver saw and overheard some employees on Reddit. She looked at one of the employee’s screens:
“I noticed he was mass-downvoting a ton of posts and comments, and he kept switching to other tabs to make posts and comments of his own. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was posting, but I presumed he was doing RM (reputation management) and asked my boss about it later. According to my boss, MS have[sic] just brought in a huge sweep of SMM managers to handle reputation management for the Xbox One,” Silver reported.
“Reputation management” is the term social media marketers use to “pose as happy customers” on social media sites. They upvote/downvote and make comments.
http://au.businessinsider.com/microsoft-positive-reddit-comments-2013-6
In WWII the US quartered in the aleutian islands without permission, removing the occupants by force.
Stupid in so far as it is short-sighted: these people limiting people's freedom are ultimately limiting their own. They are reducing their own choices once they return to civilian life.
Though maybe by the time they retire they'll be in assisted living and won't have any real choices anyway...so maybe just selfish
... from US government intrusive spying. Oh, the irony.
Consider this- The Great Wall of China filters out most of the debris. Most Chinese citizens use local equivalents such as Sina, Weibo, QQ etc which PRISM doesn't touch. The Chinese government has demanded (and received) and vetted source codes of software such as Microsoft's Windows which are used internally. Chinese telecoms are immune to FISA.
Then again, if you go down that route all your data belongs to China.
On a related note, this whole PRISM thingy does give a lot more credence to China's complaints about being victims of US covert intelligence.
PRISM inside YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
There are numerous stories where drones have targeted people that went from the hills into a diner in a village. The diner is destroyed, and everyone else inside with all males above the age of 15 labelled "combatants" just like the sole real combatant that went inside.
By your warped sense of logic, it should be fine for the police to blow up a bank killing everyone inside because a robber was inside. Of course those people should have ran out of the building and down the block before the robber walked in the door.
You are a fucking idiot that should consider removing your fingers before posting rubbish like this in the future!
On 2008/10/31:
Speaking tonight at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, Senator Obama said, near the beginning of his speech: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
He is doing what he said he will do. Excuse me for trying to steer around Godwin here, but a certain other politician, almost a century ago, also told everyone, in writing, what he will do if he is elected - and then he did just that.
The government hates encryption because it despises the idea that it isn't in control of everything. 'Tis the singular life goal of every government -> to expand and destroy all competition, act with all subterfuge until it completely controls everything within its visible domain. Duh.
It's a simple life-form, with a predetermed mindset, that follows a path laid out for it much like every one of its predecessors. It has all the complexity of an amoeba (a single-celled organism), engulfing everything in its path, and so on.
The current set of scandals? Predictable, sadly so. What this government is planning for later? Already written down in some text book somewhere. But no, we're going to continue as we always have, because hubris demands it.
Frankly I tire of this play, but it's the only thing that anyone wants to watch.
I am John Hurt.
We need to talk about solutions, not politics. I want strong encryption of all my data, in the cloud and local, by default. Come on fellow nerds, let's make this happen. Has anyone tried moving their email to an encrypted cloud storage? We need someone to step up and offer encrypted cloud based email. Google clearly has no interest in encryption, as digging through our data is their bread and butter.
This is important.
Microsoft is a huge part of this decepive siphoning of information into governent databanks.
If they work on a case by case basis, fine. But if they take the wholesale corpus of emails written by us and run it through a classifier they could label people as pro and anti government and.
They could automatically penalize the anti- fraction by some form of disenfranchisement. That would bring a climate of fear like the one that existed in East Germany.
And they got more than emails - I am sure they can identify social network accounts on many social networks and aggregate our comments. Sigh...
Yes. A rogue state, if you will
This is important.
To 14-year-olds everywhere!
Just as the BBC was created to be the propaganda arm of the UK security services/intelligence agencies (commonly known as MI5/MI6 today), Google is effectively the IT R+D arm of the NSA. Google doesn't 'give' the NSA access, because their is literally no distinction between the NSA and Google as an entity.
Prior to Google, the US government had massive problems with its IT projects. They just didn't work. Corruption would set in, the projects had to be spread across multiple key states, budgets and time-frames would explode, and the end result was always barely functioning junk. Sure, the US intelligence agencies built multi-billion dollar computing facilities in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but they were mostly dumping grounds for masses of hyper-expensive proprietary hardware with lousy near-useless software systems. They lacked all concepts of scalability.
The Google project turned data centre design on its head, using commodity computer components in simple sane configurations. Google designed scalable data storage facilities and mining software to exploit the data stored on all those hard-drives. What you see on the 'civilian' side with Google search and Google 'adsense' etc powers the shadow-Google installations used by security services across the Western world. Of course, the security services also have full access to the data gathered by the official, publicly visible Google as well.
The NSA reads ALL electronic data in the USA (and as much of the rest of the world as possible). The data is NOT used to search for fictional 'terrorists' like you very very dumb Yanks are told. 99.99% of so-called terrorism is actually direct covert action by governments, or the limited response to such covert activity. The NSA hardly needs to search for the very acts its own people are mostly responsible for.
No, the NSA is mostly interested in YOU, the sheeple, because it is you, the sheeple, that empower the monsters that rule over you. Powerful people fear the will of the 'mob' (masses, great unwashed, whatever) more than anything else. While sheeple are trained to think they are NOT responsible for the actions of their masters, only the passive support of the sheeple gives any set of rulers their ability to rule.
Your thoughts matter. Your opinions matter. Your desires matter. Not as individuals, of course- as individuals you are completely expendable. But as a dumb beast composed of tens of millions of minds, you must be controlled be being pre-empted.
The Internet increasing gets the control messages to the sheeple, and Google gets to monitor the effectiveness of this propaganda in real-time, so that such feedback can be used to refine the control messages issued next. This power is why your masters don't even have to attempt to offer you the illusion of choice when you vote. Republican or Democrat, you sheeple now expect to get the exact same actions and policies from your 'leaders'. It is the same in the UK where the Conservatives and Liberals are delivering Tony Blair's stated goals from when he was seen (by the sheeple) to run the nation on behalf of Labour.
In Britain, this phenomenon is actually given a name and an organisation behind it- COMMON PURPOSE. The goal of Common Purpose is to ensure ALL politicians and other leaders in the UK follow the same goals, regardless of their apparent political allegiances.
Google and the NSA also look for dangerous arising grass-roots movements, so they can be targeted and extinguished before they have a chance to grow and threaten the agenda of the elites. Fake grass roots movements are created and promoted in their stead, so the sheeple don't notice the change. TV depravities like Bill Maher- especially popular with beta sheeple- are positioned to reassure the sheeple, and cheer things like NSA spying, US terrorism in Syria, disarming American citizens, and providing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to Israel.
Evil is a thing, just like pain and suffering are things. Mankind is either working to reduce such problems, or it
I am afraid that no backdoors were provided, only highly monitored front doors to the account information ;)
That's one example, and did not run through to the end. Yes, it was at least close, but after contact cut off, it could have deviated quite a distance to either side or even fallen short.
With the US forces it was the same video shown over and over and over. The one down the elevator shaft. If it had happened more than once then we would have seen a more representative sample. One lucky shot was caught on film, that's all.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This is important.
To 14-year-olds everywhere!
Very true. I think it should be important to anyone who's concerned about the future of computing and the future generally, but a 14 year old is just starting their life. They'll have a lot longer to look forward to than the old, jaded people who're running Microsoft and Prism.
If I was 14 again, I'd sure as hell be hunting around frantically looking for a way out of this cage. And I'd sure as hell not be using any Microsoft products.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So...what you're saying, is that this government is effectively an anti-US government?
I will put it as "A regime which is anti-The Constitution of the United States"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm SO FUCKING ANNOYED by clueless americans whining above this post. Do you think the world CARES about your whining?
Get a grip on reality, ffs.
So far Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, FB et al had been identified by the Prism disclosure
They are indentified because they are in the big data business
However, I'll bet that there's yet another US company which may be deeply involved - CISCO
I get this thought only on hindsight - the way the US government reacted so negatively on Huawei gears really makes me wonder if there's another hidden story somewhere
Maybe, and I stress, just _maybe_ Huawei's hardware does not come with the backdoor which NSA/FBI (or any other alphabetic agency) can tap on to spy on us, and that fact alone infuriate them so much
Or ... to put it another way ... the so-called "safe hardware", the ones made by CISCO, may come with backdoors which NSA can drive a semi through
The more I think of this scenario, the more it makes sense --- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, FB can deny their participation on the Prism scheme because, technically, they are *NOT*
It's the CISCO gears that they use in the datacenter which accomplish the task
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
All that remains is the right to bear arms. Christ I'm glad I'm not American.
Honecker called. He wants his republic back.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Maybe, and I stress, just _maybe_ Huawei's hardware does come with a backdoor which Chinese intelligence services can tap on to spy on us?
Now in my private life, a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services might bother me less than a backdoor for the NSA. Because if I happen to do something that my (German) government does not like, there is the risk that the NSA shares data with them. But I don't think that the Chinese and German government are that good buddies ;-)
For a company that has valuable corporate data, industry espionage is a risk either way, but probably worse with a Chinese backdoor.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The National Security Agency is spying on the nation? Where is Ric Romero when you need him?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
> If I was 14 again, I'd sure as hell be hunting around frantically looking for a way out of this cage. And I'd sure as hell not be using any Microsoft products.
:-S
Hear! Hear! You are absolutely right! BUT...
If you were born today there is a good chance that your lovely mom put pictures of you on FB the very moment they cut the umbilical cord. And there you go, the game is on and in the very first moment FB scores 1, you... 0
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
This hysterical muppet is saying stuff like the "Soviet States of America", which does a LOT for his credibility.
I have family who lived in REAL police states, and suffered at the hands of the Soviets. Libertarian hysteria about so-called "totalitarianism" insult the memory of people who really suffered tyranny, torture and death.
If I ever meet this cunt, I'll punch him.
Because you STUPID libertarian cunts hate Obama and the US Government so badly, you are blind to the truth that is staring you in the face.
This sensitive PRISM presentation was leaked by "Anonymous" (either Chinese intelligence, or people working inadvertantly for Chinese intelligence), to discredit Obama during the Sunnylands Conference.
Obama WAS going to raise the sensitive subject of Chinese criminal hacking of American business and theft of trade secrets and IP. The Chinese don't want to lose face.
NOW that you stupid cunts are ignorantly bleating about how evil, cruel and tyrannical the US Government is, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of what has happened here. The Chinese government (who DO murder and disappear their people and spy on them extensively) have gotten off scot free.
Give me American "tyranny" over the Chinese any day. You are all idiots.
You are all cunts, and you are ALL retards, who have so little perspective, you can't see the obvious truth staring you in the face.
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin :-S
Just wait till you're my age.
;-)
I'll let you into a secret: Sin wasn't very original even when I was a boy.
Spin for a chance to get a$1,000 gift card
They don't need Prism, they have Google data mining all your emails and VoIP.
the opaque nature of FISA courts means that they're the black hand of government.
The FISA court members have lifetime appointments, and cannot be touched by the executive branch, or congress. They are effectively a law unto themselves, since their dirty laundry never gets aired by the supreme court. Oh course they're going to take the conservative approach and allow wide-spread surveillance. They can't get in trouble for doing so, but if they don't, then maybe something bad really will happen.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million
I'm not going to defend the US involvement in Vietnam; however, I do know the situation is far more complex than you suggest. I knew boat people growing up, there are a lot of them in Australia -- people who fled South Vietnam because they had a deep distaste for the North Vietnamese regime. The two "countries" were pawns in the cold war, with china and USSR on one side (before China back-stabbed both of them for nationalist reasons), and Load, Khmer, Thailand, USA, Australia, New Zealand on the other side. Back then, the Chinese/Soviets believed in a world-wide communist revolution. It was a different world. Speak to some boat people about their perception of the Vietnam war.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Are companies such as Google, AT&T, Microsoft, Facebook etc allowed to tell the public they are monitoring? Or can they be held responsible for leaking information that could 'jepordize national security'? If my memory is correct I read an article a couple of years ago which talked about this, I believe it was your patriot act that restricted what subjected organizations could tell about this.
The error is in thinking the Terrorists are the ones who bomb buildings and bridges. When people are afraid of their neighbours and their own security services, are encouraged to turn in co-workers and relatives who might act suspicious, fear the police and various forms of government retribution for any kind of dissent ... the ones who cause the terror are in the government. Specifically, the fear-mongers and those who profit from people being afraid. Yes, they're winning more every day.
He addressed that in the post:
/ For those who would inevitably bring up the 3rd amendment - We lost that one over a century ago - Thanks, Mr. Lincoln! They just haven't had a reason to casually disregard it in the past century, but make no mistake, they would (again) in a heartbeat.
> Name a single Bill of Rights amendment that remains in full efffect. Go on... Name just one.
The second amendment is still not only in effect, but it is exaggerated to humongous. Children are still shooting-up schools so that is proof that the second amendment is not only in effect, but it is very effective. Of course the GOP and their kind loves to see dead kids.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-spying-american-citizens-and-abolish-un-american-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/6XcPRSCM - At least one petition complaining about this. I havent yet found another.
Sadly for New Zealander's a local company has been supplying the NSA hardware to do the capturing for at least the last ten years. A friend who coded for www.endace.com told me ten years ago that they were supplying the US with gear to capture OC192 at full steam, from memory it was the storage sub-systems that were the issue (i.e. the fibre cards produced a 'lot' of data). The cards could be spliced into a network without modifying timestamps etc hence invisible to either end. A not well known irony of this situation for Kiwi's is that Endace products were born from Waikato University research (Waikato Uni is well known for its socialist/leftist inclinations).
Cisco id well known for putting in nsa backdoor stuff.... ask any disco certified engineer and che Will tel you about strange things happening... li ke traffic going TO known usa gov sites...
Let's hope the next Hitler is not born in America because if he is then he is gonna have lots of data that he can go through to kill any person based on its religion, political views, race and even favorite music lol. The U.S. blames China for spying on American federal agencies and the pentagon, but the U.S. government does it to its people, its own agencies and obviously to other countries including China, Russia, etc. and won't accept it lol.
People share an MP3 file and that is to violate copyright laws, the government copy or shares your data and that IS JUST COOL AND LEGAL. Encryption is just a stupid illusion to make you feel safe, the NSA has systems that could easily crack any private key or other types of encryption such as AES. That's wjhy they have super computers and huge cluster data centers to do calculations extremely fast on data. We are stupid enough to allow the government tell us how big a SSL certificate can be on the internet, whats the maximum size of a private key can be and the like so that they can easily decrypt your data when it is needed. Encryption only protects people from others that do not have the hardware and other resources to decrypt your data, that's all. Stenography is always better than encryption because you can even make somebody believe you are hiding something, make them spend time looking for it and and the end they find you have nothing to hide :)
one harmless e-mail arrived at 6:06 p.m. a bit later your e-mail of slashdot arrived with thime-stamp 6:03 - but after 6:06 ??? so checked through first by prism ?!
TFA is pure speculation of author with no facts. I think it is safe to assume that everything that you store in the cloud is shared with US government.
Because it serves to keep all the traffic cloaked from OTHER governments. That is, provided someone in each of these companies might do just one little thing: routinely hand over the private keys used for their public SSL servers for www, pop3, smtp and imap.
Do you think this little thing is so unlikely? Frankly I'm amazed. Over 400 comments on this article and only one Anonymous Coward seems to have even fronted the idea.
Plenty of chatter about brute force attacks, elaborate backdoors. Compulsory XKCD. Methinks more Slashdotters should bone up on the basics of public key SSL.
I am not quite as anonymous and my own rabbit hole on the topic leads here and here.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I read in many comments that the everybody's thought process is the government might send an order to a company that says we need this information from you. Everybody believes the company could then seek legal council to fight an order if they think it's unjust or not in their best interest. I believe this is an incorrect assumption. I also believe they are sending along a gag order as well. The gag order is, you can not discuss the information we want and the request for information we want with any other party. This gag order language is part of section 215 the patriot act. Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing the fact to anyone else. This was supposedly removed in 2006 with the reauthorization of the patriot act to allow for legal counsel in certain circumstances. (But the government does not have to tell the recipient of the order, they have that right.) This means most companies would not seek out legal counsel, because they believe they would be violating a gag order. But there is another caveat. The court orders are issued by a secret court using secret evidence. Since the court is secret, if the company wants to contest, they cannot because the secrecy of the court could override the rule of law if the secret court deems it so. Nor can you contest any "secret" evidence. The order is unstoppable.