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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
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var irony = UInt64.MaxInt;
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Snowden didn't seem to have a problem finding information. Maybe they just need a contractor to come in and do it for them...
It is highly unlikely that Snowden knows everything the NSA is involved in. The stuff he released might be inflamatory but there will be plenty more he never knew about.
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.
Suppose that instead of "National Geographic", someone at the NSA wanted to search every email that was sent to Snowden's Gmail account from within the NSA.
Do you think they would be able to do that? Not being able to do that sounds like a security problem.
.. 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.
The only thing they have to hide is how little they actually do at work.
You've obviously have never worked in government. There is no need to hide how little you actually do--furthermore, working hard or working extra will ultimately get you in trouble (we call it "getting your hand slapped").
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Seems then that a simple script run against a dump of the account names would work.
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++;
Do they license their email system? It may the only one in the world secure FROM them.
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