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NSA Broke Into Links Between Google, Yahoo Datacenters
barlevg writes "The Washington Post reports that, according to documents obtained from Edward Snowden, through their so-called 'MUSCULAR' initiative, the National Security Agency has exploited a weakness in the transfers between data centers, which Google and others pay a premium to send over secure fiber optic cables. The leaked documents include a post-it note as part of an internal NSA Powerpoint presentation showing a diagram of Google network traffic, an arrow pointing to the Google front-end server with text reading, 'SSL Added and Removed Here' with a smiley face. When shown the sketch by The Post and asked for comment, two engineers with close ties to Google responded with strings of profanity." The Washington Post report is also summarized at SlashBI. Also in can't-trust-the-government-not-to-spy news, an anonymous reader writes: "According to recent reports, the National Security Agency collects 'one-end foreign' Internet metadata as it passes through the United States. The notion is that purely domestic communications should receive greater protection, and that ordinary Americans won't send much personal information outside the country. A researcher at Stanford put this hypothesis to the test... and found that popular U.S. websites routinely pass browsing activity to international servers. Even the House of Representatives website was sending traffic to London. When the NSA vacuums up international Internet metadata, then, it's also snooping on domestic web browsing by millions of Americans."
This news is very serious, but sometimes humor is the only possible reaction to bad news.
This is a violation of Google's Terms of Service. I hope Google cuts off all access from .gov and .mil domains.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
There are some obvious reasons: The operations take place overseas, where many statutory restriction on surveillance don't apply -- and where the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) has no jurisdiction. In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011. So if the NSA decides to harvest that data on foreign soil, it can skip most of the oversight mechanisms.
We've seen a lot of articles recently about people demanding companies not host their data in the US so that they're not subject to PRISM. But if PRISM has more oversight than MUSCULAR, and MUSCULAR is only allowed to be used OFF of US soil, then it seems like the safest place for your data is in the US, after all.
I think the public figures "if I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care about spying". The idea that they are only targeting terrorists and criminals gives people the illusion that our privacy is not truly at risk. It's when they misinterpret information and target the innocent people is when they get upset. It's a false sense of security not fully understanding the larger scope of spying and archiving information.
Sent from my TARDIS
A lot of the NSA's pretense of innocence regarding metadata collection has been about expectation of privacy. They get information posessed by the telephone companies, not by private citizens. Since the information is already being given to the company by the citizen, the citizen has no reasonable expectation of privacy, and bulk metadata raises no 4th amendment issue.
This case defies that excuse. Those fiber optic cables are leased lines, over which Google and Yahoo have very reasonable expectations of privacy. So, if challenged, the government will either have to publish a different legal pretense or give Google and Yahoo some sort of sweetheart contract as hush money.
Perhaps I should go buy some GOOG and YHOO.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
There is a third option. The NSA is not looking for terrorists. They are doing all this monitoring for other purposes.
... and I hope that "string of profanity" was directed at the NSA who put it there.
The NSA didn't put them there, it was the GCHQ. The NSA then analyzed the data for them.
From the article: "For the MUSCULAR project, the GCHQ directs all intake into a “buffer” that can hold three to five days of traffic before recycling storage space. From the buffer, custom-built NSA tools unpack and decode the special data formats that the two companies use inside their clouds"
That's cute, but lies. I don't know how you found the Yahoo answers page, maybe you searched for "Why are all journalists democrats" like the clearly biased person you are, but anyone who's taken a basic course on statistics knows what they're used to do. Not to mention, according to The American Journalist, the numbers have never been near what you claim. The win still goes to the democrats, more journalists side with them out of everyone who claims to be a journalist, not that we should take that to represent how things are reported. Add to that the fact that a little more Googling, as you're so fond of doing, shows Fox News reporters claiming to be independent... More lies from the right! It might also be worth considering that from the perspective of any outsider, our left-wing radicals are further right than most other countries can stomach. Evidence: Look at who Obama just put into office. Get past fighting with everyone over parties, and particularly lying through your teeth and belittling everyone, if you think either party isn't screwing you as hard as they can you're a fool. Although with a response like, "because it's so idiotic to argue against the point I made," after being called out on citing a yahoo answer that looks like it was written by a Bush PR agent, you've aptly demonstrated you are more than foolish enough to buy the BS.