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NSA Can't Search Its Own Email
cycoj writes "The NSA says that there is no central method to search its own email. When asked in a Freedom of Information Act request for emails with the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period, the agency, which has been collecting and analyzing the data of hundreds of millions of Internet users, says it can only perform person-per-person searches on its own email."
Perfect example of "do as I say, not as I do". But this isn't just a NSA problem, it is a government problem.
sudo make me a sandwich
FTFY
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
var irony = UInt64.MaxInt;
Requiem for the American Dream
The NSA says that there is no central method to search its own email.
[cough] Bullshit [/cough]
I'm sure GCHQ https://www.gchq.gov.uk/Pages/homepage.aspx will search your mail and that CESG https://www.gchq.gov.uk/AboutUs/Pages/CESG.aspx will advise you on how to fix your problem.
Maybe they should run all their internal email through their PRISM system, that way it can be searched for keywords and META data much easier. Problem solved.
That's such a line of shit.
It's not that they cannot search their emails. It's that they have chosen to not create a search mechanism, because they have found this excuse is accepted by the courts to deny information requests. They will use every trick available to them to avoid adhering to laws they don't like.
Do you really believe anything they say?
I suspect the real reason is that they don't want to, not that they can't. In the NSA's defense, when an organization works with highly compartmentalized information, having the ability to scan all employees' email is not wise from a security perspective.
Isn't this pretty much what privacy adocates have advised for years? The NSA is one of the groups gathering people's data against their will. If anyone knows what possibilities to avoid if you don't want people in your data, it's them.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
As an Exchange administrator, I can say that searching across an entire mail database is absolutely possible, and also very simple to do from the Management Shell. They're either lying, or just don't want to do it.
Snowden didn't seem to have a problem finding information. Maybe they just need a contractor to come in and do it for them...
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
If I were in charge, and the agency responsible for technological espionage and information security told me they couldn't search through their own emails, I would fire them. Every single one of them. Bam. Agency dissolved, someone go think of a new TLA for the new agency. This is like a Navy that can't figure out how to dock a battleship, or a tax agency that doesn't know what all the valid exemptions are. Complete and utter incompetence.
What's saddest is that this almost certainly isn't true. They've got these capabilities. They're just trying to hide something ("everything" qualifies as something, for their purposes). *Maybe* they're telling the truth, if they've got some custom, highly-encrypted system where emails can only be decrypted by the users. But that doesn't seem like the phrasing used here.
What's saddest is that "we're completely fucking incompetent" is not just the excuse they went with, but that it actually works.
It's time for Congress to disassemble this agency. Their track record of protecting the American public is horrible.
What a bunch of lying douches.
I concur it's very simple to search across and pull user or timeframe emails. If they are like any other branches of the gov why are they not required to maintain backup copies of email? Wasn't there a big thing during the Clinton administration that resulted in Washington keeping emails on record after that?
Even if their server can't do it what about their backup repository.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
No doubt a trusting agency such as that would already be scanning their internal emails looking for leaks.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
As an Exchange administrator, I can say that searching across an entire mail database is absolutely possible, and also very simple to do from the Management Shell. They're either lying, or just don't want to do it.
Of course it's possible with Exchange or with anything else for that matter. There is an exception to FOI requests where getting the information is expensive. What they mean is they can't do it within whatever small budget they allocate to serving FIO requests.
Disassemble? No disassemble Johnny 5!
sudo make me a sandwich
Too incompetent to be transparent, then too incompetent to have power like with Prism.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Lie, lie, lie, until you get caught, 'cause there's nothing to lose and everything to gain.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There are lots of products that do this for exchange. I would bet that it's a security issue or they just don't want the feature.
.. but ends up as truth.
Seriously though, the NSA is directly involved in lying to Congress. Do you think they would have any system that would allow easy discoverability of their misdeeds? I am sure their processes are in place to make any type of lawsuit or congressional oversight as difficult as possible.
Of course, any results this poor fellow would have received anyway would be just pages and pages of blacked out text with the headers and footers as they only "public" information.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
NSA doesn't fund their operations primarily with drug running anymore. Insider trading is the best source of funding. And they have all the information they need to do this.
Or whatever large glob of crap they store the email in. They do have servers, right? Somewhere on those servers is a file, RAID array, partition, SAN or JBOD, Most likely encrypted. Hand over the disks, the encryption keys and whatever else is needed to access that Metatdata.
Have the court appoint someone approved by the EFF to sign an NDA/Gag order/whatever and sift through the Metadata removing items which are of key importance. If those top brass military brats think they are above the law, go around them.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Does a good job tracking emails....
Get up!
Not wanting to or it being hard isn't an excuse to not comply with a valid FOIA request. Finding email correspondence is a pretty routine thing that they should be able to handle. If we truly had checks and balances in the system they would be punished for failure to comply.
I thought they were monitoring, and could search, all communications on Earth?
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
It's SO f'ing ridiculous, & worst of all? They're trying to feed us BULLSHIT like we're fucking STUPID or something... It's an INSULT to American people's intelligence!
* This really 'sets me off': &, it should all of you also, as fellow americans - we DON'T want this shit to go on -> http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/24/video-nsa-white-house-getting-worried-about-defunding-vote-in-house/
Mr. Alexander's getting "panicky" & REACTING too: His tax dollars WE PAY FOR *may* be cut the F off... "We SEE you" pal, for what you TRULY are.
Why am I upset along with every other "Joe Public little person" out there? The assholes use it against us, but "OH, NO, not on ourselves!"...
That, & I saw protesters get f'd over - then, the abuse of the IRS targetting political opponents (both of which are WRONG as wrong gets), but then I saw how Gen. Keith Alexander & Mr. James Clapper outright LIED saying they were NOT intercepting communique data of US citizens (especially since the NSA is or WAS not permitted to do so to native US citizenry - sure, "but it's LEGAL" yea, ok - changing the rules IN "SECRET COURTS" (WTF? They're EMPLOYEES OF OURS, not our masters, we have a RIGHT to know what the fuck they're up to, especially when it concerns us), subverting constitutional rights & such is WRONG too - up there with "hate speech" b.s. too - if you say something, it has every RIGHT to be said, but it's up to YOU to listen or not, but it is STILL a right).
NOW, here's a theory on WHY Mr. Obama is trying to VETO this from passing: My guess is that the reason the head of the IRS didn't lose her job is that she'd "spill the beans" on WHO gave her the "go-ahead" to pull her shit as she did (and his hair has turned grey from it this past quarter - now, there's a clue)... same with all the others like Clapper & Alexander.
The rats WILL start eating the other rats when push comes to shove, just like in this video (i have to hand musicians 1 thing - they're generally intelligent & see things WAY in advance) -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfpgpf6QVnI&ob=av2n
APK
P.S.=> Folks - today, is THE day, where we find out just how "for the people & BY the people" our representatives in Congress are... apk
having the ability to scan all employees' email is not wise from a security perspective.
NOT having the ability to scan email is not wise from a security perspective. If someone is doing something they ought not to be doing, exactly how is the NSA going to find out? They claim they need this ability to find out if civilians are dangerous so why would the same logic not apply to their internal operations? Makes NO sense whatsoever.
As an Exchange administrator, I can say that searching across an entire mail database is absolutely possible, and also very simple to do from the Management Shell. They're either lying, or just don't want to do it.
It is also possible on Notes, any Unix mailbox format (maildir, mbox, maildir+, w/e), and any other e-mail system I can think of.
morcego
Yeah this story sounds real. I am not seeing an accompanying article or evidence. Not saying it's not real, but it sounds like one of those government conspiracy theories like the government faked 9-11. Competent enough to stage 9-11 in front of cameras and people, with no one leaking it, then incompetent, for instance Snowden leaking information about the NSA. Who knows...
Sorry I'm stupid, the link wasn't showing in my browser for some reason. They're idiots then for not upgrading their email services.
That is probably one of the dumbest comments I've seen on slashdot for some time. It's like one of those comments you would see on YouTube or something. I'm no fan of government anything, but to say that the NSA has a terrible track record of protecting the American public is just stupid.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I can see one way in which this might be both true and proper. If each account was individually encrypted with keys that only the users had, what they're saying would be completely true. And I think it would be completely proper and even laudatory to run an email system that way. They could search individual accounts by having the users decrypt them, but they couldn't do a wholesale search of the entire email system. This is the way email should be!
A somewhat more likely approach would be that by policy, users are not allowed to keep email on the server. All email must be downloaded or deleted. No online folders, ridiculously small INBOX quotas, maybe a read-once policy where as soon as the mail is retrieved the server auto-deletes it. I can actually understand this being done; I've worked with corporate lawyers who would love to have the email system set up this way for the express purpose of defeating global searches. Anything can be twisted and used against you, so save nothing, leave no evidence. I certainly don't agree with that mindset, but I've worked with people who are like that.
Not that I think it actually is done either of those ways. I think it's far more likely that they're simply lying and refusing to comply. It's probably simply policy to refuse such blanket FOIA requests, and there's undoubtedly a clause buried in the FOIA itself that allows them to require that requests be specific and narrow. You know, in the way that searches of private individuals are supposed to be.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
It could be that certain agencies are exempt from the law. For your own safety of course. It's better that you don't know.
c++;
Yeah this story sounds real. I am not seeing an accompanying article or evidence. Not saying it's not real, but it sounds like one of those government conspiracy theories like the government faked 9-11. Competent enough to stage 9-11 in front of cameras and people, with no one leaking it, then incompetent, for instance Snowden leaking information about the NSA. Who knows...
I suspect it is a very real FOIA excuse. Whether the excuse is valid or not is hard to say.
Within the bureaucracy, you can tell the FOIA officer your limitations and s/he sends them back to the requester.
Then it's on to step two: Natl Geog calling them full of congress and demanding information about their e-mail system (probably already available on a Chinese site).
And I'll bet the NSA is not lying.
I'll bet they have multiple different e-mail systems, all of them installed by different contractors at different times under different contracts and no easy way to search thru them all, especially with the additional security overlays.
That's just a guess based on normal corporate behavior in groups that grow fast and have money to burn.
My inclination would be to believe that they have built their email system so that what they are saying is technically correct, but I would bet that is because they don't want to (of course, there is a significant chance that they are just lying). However, even if their email system does not technically allow them to search in the manner that they say it can't, there is almost certainly another way of doing so that would yield essentially the same results.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Because it's one or the other. Mayhem ensues....
Then it is.
Three possibilities :
1 - It's a lie
2 - It's true because they have a super-secure system in place
3 - It's true because they are incompetent (I'm talking about their administration, not their researchers)
Considering the recent turn of events, I'd go with #3.
What Snowden discovered didn't surprise me. Spying is part of the job after all. But the other part is keeping it secret, and they failed miserably.
Maybe they should use the PRISM system to search the inbox of National Geographic for emails from the NSA. These should be in the system already.
OK, fine.
Here's a solution: NSA takes their entire email database and dumps it out to Wikileaks.
We'll take it from there. Gratis.
Profit!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The NSA flipping their finger at you looks like.
The working phrase here is: "Plausible Deniability", kinda like: "Above The Law".
They could be lying, or their system could be deliberately designed this way, to limit the amount of information a mole could find.
My ass
As experts in security and infomration gathering, maybe the NSA knows how to keep their email compartmentalized and secure from being searched, even by their own people.
Do they license their email system? It may the only one in the world secure FROM them.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A budget that they make small on purpose.
Don't kid yourself, they are being difficult on purpose.
Thus NSA demonstrating, in the digital era, "quis custodiet ipsos custodes". A little bit scary because it raises the question, if the NSA empowers its people to such a degree, but there is not even a similar capacity within the organization to police itself, is there then a potential for abuses on an individual level? Have such individual abuses occured?
The NSA should simply host their email with Google and it will be instantly searchable through PRISM.
Infact the NSA should compete with google and offer its own free email and search engine, PRISM. Just PRISM it!
I guess no one does.
I think they probably put a lot of thought into exactly this when they implemented their system. I have no doubt that the NSA has the ability to search the e-mails of their own employees. But, I also agree that they most likely built their system so that they could fend off open records requests in a way that at least seems feasible to outsiders. They may have implemented additional "security features" or add-ons that make it difficult/impossible. But, I just don't see an intelligence agency NOT having the ability to search their employee's e-mails (both individually and system-wide)... I think that internal monitoring is probably very heavy. They don't want any more Snowden incidents, after all.
As an Exchange administrator, I can say that searching across an entire mail database is absolutely possible, and also very simple to do from the Management Shell. They're either lying, or just don't want to do it.
Also as an Exchange administrator, I can assure you that if your database is sufficiently large, such a request can *still* take forever to fill. You're basically looking at minimum 1 day per Terabyte of email. The interface is not quick, and it does crawl it mailbox by mailbox. Yes, you can do it with a single command, but it is prohibitive on staff time to setup/execute and lawyer time to redact the non-responsive bits.
++c;?