Slashdot Mirror
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."
... and I hope that "string of profanity" was directed at the NSA who put it there.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
No one knows how many terrorist plots that have been adverted due to this. Just think back at the Boston marathon event. We should be grateful that we have not had more of them for the past decade. A lot of people forget this.
Fucking traitors.
Slashdotters seem pretty appalled at these revelations, but when will the general public reach the point of disgust? In theory the people of the USA still have the power to change these behaviors through the ballot box. The news just goes on and on. but the outrage seems slow to reach the surface.
Nothing is "secure" any more. "Secure" is now a one word oxymoron.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I was under the impression that Google and Yahoo! were already giving everything over to the NSA per legal request.
What's the purpose of the snooping and line-tapping if they already get it straight from the horses mouth?
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.
Americans and us dangerous foreigners, expect no sympathy. One does not have to believe in Karma to know that you deserve the domestic spying.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-30/alexander-denies-nsa-infiltrated-google-to-yahoo-servers
" popular U.S. websites routinely pass browsing activity to international servers. Even the House of Representatives website was sending traffic to London."
We at the NSA call that Traffic Engineering.
Is there some reason the NSA is still around? Obliterate the agency, their criminal members, all associated, and be done with it!
"two engineers with close ties to Google responded with strings of profanity."
I guess the opening won't around for long. I read a few months ago Google was redoing their sharing networks, maybe they already knew.
Google (and the others) shrugged and played nice with the NSA, to what extent we don't know. They should have realized that the NSA didn't need their permission to get that data... they were getting it anyway. And a lot more.
I wonder if Google can sue? And if they can, will they?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
NSA = Nothing Sacred Anymore
Unless, of course, there's a clause in there somewhere, that says "even though you have rented a fiber optics channel from A to B, we reserve the right to copy all the traffic that passes through and share it with third party" :) NSA is a third party, right?
Hyperom.com
Been sniffin' around in your mother's dirty laundary, too.
This part made me laugh
To guard against data loss and system slowdowns, Google and Yahoo maintain fortress-like data centers across four continents and connect them with thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable. These globe-spanning networks, representing billions of dollars of investment, are known as “clouds” because data moves seamlessly around them
obviously started and perpetuated by Bush. I'm sure Obama is learning of this from the news just like us.
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.
Can we simplify the process and just list which digital systems the NSA is NOT tapping?
At this point, just take 7 columns on every newspaper and a superbowl ad and say they listen to everything... Maybe the public might care.
They should be proud of themselves for a comprehensive job.
We have a lot of work to do at the ballot box. (it only that worked)
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
NSA is doing nothing its forbears weren't doing just "better."
...When Google itself seems to believe you don't deserve to have certain kinds of privacy? (In regards to Schmidt and Gundotra's perspective that the service they are pushing, Google Plus, is supposed to be an identification service used to make sure that real user information is being used). Yes, this makes Google look bad, but it's also proof as to why not anonymizing yourself on the internet is stupid. (And yes, I realize that anonymization doesn't protect you from the NSA, but it is at least one additional layer of obfuscation, which apparently even Google should realize at this point is important).
It's time to break inside the NSA, guys !
NSA spying is just the latest of myriad unpleasant facts of modern life that range from annoyances to outrages.
IMO, it sits somewhere in the 'annoyance' area of the spectrum, insofar as it has zero impact on my life, liberty or pursuit of happiness (other than that I would prefer my tax money be spent otherwise).
Even the theoretical impacts are so heavily wrapped in paranoid contingencies that NSA mischief would only ever be a tiny facet of a much larger, more sinister and (most importantly) completely improbable future that would be worth absolutely no person's or entities while to attempt to realize.
So, you are just going to have to accept life where someone could, theoretically, observe and judge you based on your browsing and email habits. It was ever thus, even if you were too naive to realize it.
There's a "conspiracy theory" detail getting lost in all this discussion: the person who wrote the post-it note the Washington Post is featuring put a smiley face on the Google front-end server next to "SSL Added and Removed Here." To me, that says that they think that SSL encryption is just adorbs, implying they have a way to break it.
I have a theory, based on absolutely nothing.
I think a mathematician working for NSA solved Riemann's years ago and, consequently, NSA can break any internet encryption.
I'm actually okay with this. But it seems awfully cruel to keep the proof secret from the poor mathematicians who've spent their lives trying to solve it.
This is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to do, what it was CREATED to do. There should not be any surprise at this. Of course, it was created in wartime and lasted into the cold war, when overseas contact was suspect.
If I were to tap into someone's computer (or link or whatever), I'd get my ass sued off. Guess Google suing the NSA is out of the question...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The only problem is what your choice is between John Jackson, and Jack Johnson or Kang and Kodos
While true it ignores the fact that while Kang and Kodos are essentially the same, only violations by Kang get much outrage in the press, while Kodos gets a free pass as it were.
With the press as we have it being 90+% Democrats, who do you expect stories like the NSA issues to get anything but a passing mention? Just look at the outrage in the media if a Republican does ANYTHING wrong.
If you really, really want low information voters to be informed of wrong doing, then you should do your best to promote the party where the press will actually serve the function it is supposed to. But if you keep voting in people from a party that are very nearly in collusion with the press; well, what result do you expect?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The revelations about break in aren't the most important part of this story.
This is proof positive that the NSA has broken SSL. If they can strip and re-assert encrypted traffic without anyone knowing then it's as some of us have suspected all along. They really have broken encryption that was previously thought resistant to this type of attack.
WP has to be the worst rag going with some of the stupidest journalists possible.
In this case, NSA is NOT doing anywhere near the spying that WP implies. NSA has said that they as a group are not spying on Americans the way that WP and others imply.
OTOH, the author clearly misses the point on why the data is sent to UK, and back, AND why data from all of the west and many other nations pass through USA, rather than keep it local.
5i, anybody?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Technically the NSA has been downloading copyrighted material, and very likely has more than a few MP3s of popular songs filed away in their datacenters.
I suggest we lobby the RIAA to sue the NSA for $10,000,000,000,000,000 because that's what 50 or so songs are worth, so they say.
The only trouble with this strategy of course, is that I don't know who to root for. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? No, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy dammit.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I have news, Microsoft is in even deeper than google or yahoo. Bing would be just as fucked
How is the well known, and obvious fact that most of the media are Democrats a lie?
Look it up from any source you care. This fact is undeniable. My 90% is in fact a very conservative estimate because I like to give some slack, but poll after poll reports this result.
You can also verify this in the core story at hand - outage over the NSA. It is mentioned in the press but not very much. Or what about drone strikes, or the embassy killings, or any other story you can name⦠all of it gets short attention in the media, nothing like what you see with any Republican wrongdoing.
As the original poster said the two parties are currently very much the same. So the only thing that makes sense to do is to vote for the party the press actually reports wrongdoing on.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People use Bing?
Citizens, unless we vote out the bums they will change nothing. Might as well shout Heil NSA!
Someone MUST have posted this already, but they didn't break SSL. They're happy because the SSL encryption is removed before the data reaches the backend server. If the NSA can sniff the leased line between the front end server and the back ends stuff, then they're viewing unencrypted traffic. Its not rocket surgery, its simply flashing the right credentials to get someone to let you plug into the patch panel. Any company running load balancers with SSL offloading is susceptible to the same gag, although its probably much harder to sneak it by if its a LAN and not a private leased line (no middleman).
The government's hypocrisy is being shown in all its glory. It was only a few months ago when so many politicians were supporting the widespread surveillance of Americans as an essential part of Homeland Security (tm). When the NSA's surveillance of heads of state was revealed, many (not all) politicians denounced the practice. I would argue that there is more information germane to our national interests to be gained by bugging Merkel and other heads of state than the average American citizen. Do I think we should routinely tap the communications of the heads of state of allies? No. When we have a VALID reason? OK, but the reason better be good enough that the person being spied upon would rather keep quiet about the whole affair than having to explain why he/she was under surveillance.
Sometimes there are good reasons to spy on some Americans. We have processes in place for those. But the secret and indiscriminate surveillance we have now have no place in a free and democratic society. How would Senators, supreme court justices, or even the POTUS feel about having their communications spied upon? Do they have an expectation and right of privacy that mere mortals don't?
No, Google is a less restrained than government. Google can limit your life a lot more than the NSA can.
The government has limits given to it by the constitution and laws. The NSA, by law, can't even enforce laws in the US, since it's a military organization and the Posse Comitatus act prevents the military from enforcing US laws. That's why the NSA could only tap foreign data centers, which is perfectly fine.
If foreigners didn't want to be tapped by the US, perhaps they should have done a better job of inventing the Internet.
Additionally, not only does Google have no such limit, they have access to governmental resources as well. The same authoritarian fears you have about Google exist with the government.
Really, in the side of Government vs. Corporation, the only side that represents YOU is Government. We liberal socialists know this key fact, and use that to our advantage. We treat government as part of us, and make it work for us.
Libertarians make the mistake of disassociating themselves from government, which is funny considering that government teaches you language, provides the roads you drive on, delivers your mail, and literally makes sure the air you breathe is safe.
We liberal socialists use government to limit the power of Corporations.
Without government, Corporations would, literally, have you as slaves.
Don't make the basic libertarian mistake of disassociating yourself from government. Libertarianism really is a sign of weakness, and only the poorest people are libertarians in this world.
Smart, richer, powerful people are always socialist liberals.
You libertarians only operate on the possibility of doing what you want. ("Freedom! Liberty!")
We liberal socialists actually do what we want.
Freedom and liberty are useless concepts if it doesn't actually provide you with results, such as health care.
Do not be on the side of the weak libertarians, that live in the land of theory.
Be on the side of actual, tangible results.
Basically at this point no adult should EVER be a libertarian. You might as well say you're a dumbass in public.
The Supreme Court is really clear on this. If you tap a land line without a warrant, you violate the Constitution.
I often hear people say this on slashdot. Americans about American government, whenever somebody mentions "a plot". This can be one of those plots.
5 years ago, everybody would say it's impossible this conspiracy plot is happening because they're stupid morons who can't do sh.t, and I should go buy me self a tinfoil hat somewhere.
What we heard in the last 5 months invalidates opinions of 90 % of people visiting this site. They're obviously efficient and capable at having plots and god only knows (maybe Snowden too) what they did/are doing and will continue to do in the future, but anybody who can think without getting his emotions involved, will naturally assume that whatever they're doing - is not good.
Here's another conspiracy plot. Make Americans think they Government is not capable of doing anything so they (the Americans thinking like this) discredit and label everybody who figures out the truth.
If it's not on the TV/Newspapers it's not happening mentality will ruin you. They are and were just tools for the same Gov that is doing this to all of us to misinform you and control what you know and not know.
Thanks to the internet, blogs, mistake made by booze allen or whatever is the name of that company, we now getting more and more informed. While we getting more and more informed, we're also getting more and more disgusted which we weren't before... naturally. Since we didn't kknow any better, we just knew what they told us.
I know i know... it's a plot again, but i don't expect any better from your, or any other Gov anyway.
This is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to do, what it was CREATED to do. There should not be any surprise at this.
"Aaarrrgh! Giant battle robots! Running amok in the street destroying all humans with their atomic gamma lasers! Help! Somebody stop them! Shut down the volcano island base where the evil madman is controlling them from!"
"Silly people, that's the killer robot's charter! It's what they're SUPPOSED to do! That's what they were CREATED to do! Why are you all so surprised?"
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
It's not that hard or expensive for Google to use end-to-end encryption on these links. Adding more layers for the NSA to have to deal with is always good!
Hopefully Google's network engineers also think this way and are in a meeting right now planning it!
And the patriot act conceived and produced by the neo-cons, allows the NSA to have a warrant that allows them to follow the leads quickly and find the terrorists.
Sadly, under W, it was abused (stats showed that more than 95% of these warrants were NOT used on terrorists but simple local criminals). However, in 2008, the GOP forced this to be a closed issue. So, we do not know what has happened under O, but considering that neo-cons/tea* have been on the intelligence committee to review this, I would guess that things improved.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which means the strategy of using Boundary (Edge) SSL termination is now in question. I wonder how this will affect companies like F5 and Cisco will fare with this kind of news. I swear the biggest damn thing that the NSA has fucked up is a lot of US Tech Companies. Great Going Crapper et al.!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Who gives the NSA the money to do these things? I guess I already know the answer, your congressional representatives. I am sure they told you about this when they were asking for your vote.
Not if you do it outside of the US. Hence the link to the GCHQ.
From undisclosed interception points, the agencies copy entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of Yahoo and Google.
Certainly there are multiple interception possibilities for Google and one possibility I think for Yahoo outside of the US. Also you have to remember that very rarely does the US government or the people doing nefarious deeds for the US government ever rarely get called to justice for what they do. Shit, Nixon violated wiretap laws, authorized breaking and entering and committed other possible misdeeds but all he lost was reputation and the White House. He never did any prison time. His cronies did time but he didn't.
Oliver North was labelled as a hero even though he violated the law, never saw any time in Club Fed.
One thing you have to remember is that the Ruling Elite usually have an escape plan with a requisite golden parachute. It's been that way since the French Revolution and has worked pretty much for everybody with a few exceptions.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Everyone in the business knows this has been going on for ages, why the fuck do they act so surprised? It's not like they're fooling anybody.
EVERYONE KNOWS they've been in bed with the agencies. Acting surprised only make things worse.
Commenters have been joking in other stories about the NSA, but the corruption is serious. As the U.S. government becomes more corrupt, everyone in the U.S. becomes less prosperous, except some dishonest rich people.
The corruption recently revealed is only a tiny part of the total. U.S. citizens are not even allowed to know the names of all the secret agencies, but they are required to support those agencies with taxes.
The "law" says that secret agencies can go to any company and ask for basically anything, and require secrecy by threatening to put company officials in prison. Once in prison, company officials would basically have very limited rights; any actions are conducted in secret. That means that no company in the U.S. can be trusted about anything.
The U.S. government believes it can kill anyone, anywhere. There are those who say there are regulations, but what will happen if the secret regulations aren't followed in a secret agency? Very likely nothing. News stories give the strong impression that, in any way an average person would view the actions of secret agencies, there is not real regulation. For example, when the U.S. government conducts drone strikes that kill innocent bystanders, employees of secret agencies use language that makes killing people sound like it is considered a minor mistake.
No, sorry, wrong movie. Evil madman --> evil robots. This is the movie where the good guys decide that common people just don't understand the dangers of the outside world, and slowly go from "paternalistic" to "totalitarian" while still thinking they're the good guys.
NOT 'man in the middle', and no direct compromise of the Google Frontend Server (GFE) is being described here. MUSCULAR is passive taps on presently unencrypted private links between the companies' global data centers. In theory these would be sited on the borders of the United States or (safely) within foreign space.
This cooperation between the Brits and the Gits is ESCHELON in action. Your tax (and drug) dollars at work. I see that the latest Snowden revelation identifies an interception point that is magically distant from Kansas. All the better to take our minds off what NSA is doing in Kansas.
Frankly (and sadly) I do not believe that NSA has ever sited any of their communications taps to avoid gathering domestic traffic. I believe full disclosure would reveal this.
Okay, maybe during the Cold War -- but If there ever were any NSA folk who'd be aghast at the idea of vacuuming their neighbors' telephone calls and private emails, where desk analysts can issue flags that key ancillary targets automatically derived from social networks and phone logs... including their own sons and daughters... those people are not objecting now. They are are gone to grave or recently retired in comfortable surroundings, watching these goings-on with growing discomfort and distaste.
Or long retired. I may have met some of them in the islands as a kid, grim and reserved with little to say about current events. I really wish they would speak up now while there is still time. Especially the ones who witnessed first-hand how the KGB ran Eastern Europe, how Chairman Mao 'purified' China, how Hitler first captured Germany with promises to lead them out of inflationary ruin.
To do these things right it would be a great help to have good intel on all your citizens. Do they realize how incredibly stupid this all is?
Under massive domestic surveillance EVERYONE in the entire country is subject to direct blackmail. NO ONE IS EXEMPT. This is because everyone has a loved one, child, friend relative that has actionable events in their past. This means they get to choose who leads the country by eliminating all opposition. Scandals will just keep coming to light. For more on that see my post about blackmail and 'duress'
Under massive surveillance EVERY ONE of the classic and hallowed checks and balances which keep our Republic together and human traditions that civilization on track is subject to TOTAL CORRUPTION and outright NULLIFICATION.
No human judge is exempt, no jury safe from side-channel tampering. With private communications intercepts it is possible to select or disqualify jurors based on a pretty complete profile of their views. No more Twelve Angry Men.
Under massive surveillance every possible terrorist scenario that hurts us is avoided. Give thanks and praise. But more chillingly, every scenario could benefit the intelligence community will inevitably become a reality, if not in your time then your children's. All they need to do is contact people, ignore people and prepare to capitalize on the event. No more 'acts of God' or tragedies that galvanize honest people into surprising yet dignified ways to some surprising yet triumphant end.
History becomes a script written by the most ruthless and least inhibited who happen have access to the secrets. We see seeds of this in our own time.
Under total surveillance financial markets are relegated to sideshows for the programmed accumulation of wealth (and targeted ruin). By forming an alliance with entities that emit High Frequency Trades, a shadow government can maintain a presence that is unlikely to be detectable or discernible, and in any case, when manipulation begins real humans will react predictably, helplessly.
There is a reason we have evolved so quickly as a species. Not just intelligence, but applied freedom to think, act,
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
They had to break into a direct line because google maps ran too slow.
TFA says
encryption is “added and removed here!”
and it also says:
the company is rushing to encrypt the links between its data centers. “It’s an arms race,”
That looks contradictory. Is it encrypted or not?
No wonder Dianne Feinstein finally came out sort of against the NSA. When they piss off one of her biggest clients it gets serious.
Okay, the NSA is in your house, behind your couch, with a parabolic mic. They're also most of your friends on Facebook and the guy who gives you free chicken nuggets at restaurants. They're probably replying to this post too, lol.
vote for a 3rd. party candidate.
Dirty.
YOU are dirty!
U MUSH BE PUNISH'D!
Ah and what did General Alexander to Ms. Missy CEO of Yahoo to gain such succulent favors!
Yes I "got" the whole Kang/Kodos thing, I know the episode and even agree with what it was saying - Democrats/Republicans are largely the same. It's why I vote libertarianâ¦
But I am not STUPID enough to think that anytime soon the major parties we have will not be the ones in power. So given that, what CAN you do?
The only thing you can do is support the lizard where at least the media reports when they are eating people. Note that SUPPORT does not have to mean voteâ¦
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's absurd to even suggest they are in the same order of magnitude. The anti-war stories dried up altogether after Obama won office even as he was droning away. Obamacare website fiasco under bush would warrant 2x7 news coverage, not the in-passing coverage you have today.
Never mind the burying of bad unemployment numbers, bad deficit numbers (what deficit? Spending is great!), yada yada yada.
Open your eyes fool, rather than pulling the wool down ever tighter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because it's so idiotic to argue against the point I made, I took the least possible time in finding any information at all about it - basically I posted the first Google result because people like you were unable apparently even to do that little, instead calling me a liar for telling you the truth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A Kickstarter campaign to put up billboards alongside the top 25 rush hour arteries across the USA with stark black letters on white background:
The NSA knows what you did.
And one day they will expose you.
Stop Them and save yourself.
Referring to the prior discussion on this topic: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4193599&cid=44816577
===>>
I will believe Google is genuinely against NSA's encryption breaking scheme only when Google moves ALL their servers OUTSIDE of the United States of America.
No point of talking about "upping the stakes" when the same old thing - a secret warrant demanding full disclosure - can happen anytime.
Google has seen so very many attacks on its infrastructure that all links are now or will soon be encrypted.
===>>
Rumors are that Google is also large enough to distribute secret keys to the end point devices and can even
manage building to building and room to room encrypted data links.
I am of the opinion that Google is under pressure from TLA organizations to protect its resources as a mater of national
security. i.e. penetration from China, Iran, Korea, Cuba needs to be stopped. The capability to stop industrial
and international agents has the side effect of stopping or slowing down US agencies.
Those agencies are well armed with paper and via legal process can get that which is needed.
There is a lesson here. Do not obstruct US national TLAs but protect fully from international and industrial
attacks and you will be in as good a legal situation as possible. Secret orders are a tangle. Validating
that a secret order is a valid order risks divulging the secret order to the degree that it pays to not act on
or acknowledge the order that cannot be verified as it may well be an elaborate phishing attack by a foreign
agency with deep pockets. OK that may not be practical but the point is that becoming the target of
international agents unfriendly to the US is very possible and astoundingly possible. Physical, technical
and social attacks are very possible...
Since I am not an attorney none of what I said can be construed as advice. Do get advice in
advance of the need for advice when adversarial stuff is flying hither and yon and clear thinking
and communication is impossible.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Unless the land line at some point could have been or might in the future be used by foreigners, in which case it is okay, because foreigners aren't human anyway and you can spy on them and torture them as much as you want, and by extension this applies to any Americans unpatriotic enough to communicate with them.
Is USA becoming as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world nation
Casteism
1. Build floating datacenter that can go into int'l waters, or is generally mobile and liveable
2. Google Glasses
3. Bitcoin
4. Release weather baloons a month ago, use those for connectivity (per Daily Show Oct 30)
5. Profit
Read Karl Schroeder's To Hie from Far Celenia in Metatropolis, a short story collection. Spooky predictions, unintentional I am sure.
NSA AND ITS MOUNTAIN OF COMMUNICATIONS INTERCEPTS AND ARCHIVED PRIVATE INFORMATION COULD TURN THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE INTO A FUCKING COMMUNIST TERMITE MOUND. REALLY QUICK.
The next logical step is to connect all of this information to the great-gran system of a Watson (or similar) heritage and finally realize the planned econo^H^H^H^H^Hsociety in its full glory as the Soviet Union always intended.
Oct 28 1993, front page fo the NYTimes, article by Ralph Blumenthal.
Emad Salem was an ex-Egyptian army intelligence guy. Hooked up with the FBI in NYC to be their 'informant', actually their agent provacateur.
He recruited everyone. He wore a wire that convicted his fellow conspirators of conspiracy, I recall most were not convicted of anything except conspiracy, but memory may be wrong on that.
He also recorded conversations with his FBI handlers, which were discovered by Kunstler and forced into the trial record. In those recordings, he says he spent all the FBI's $ on building the bomb, ... always needed more $. He also says "I could substitute an inert powder, so it couldn't explode". FBI says "no, don''t do that". The FBI knew everything about that plot.
The bomb exploded, 4 people dead, $250M in damages, 1000 or so people injured. The FBI tried to both cover up their role and to display their amazing detective powers by lies. Recall them finding the VIN off the axel, and how fast they tracked it back to the truck, then the people?
Given that prior, and their oft-repeated generation of new terrorist plots among the retarded in our country (ACLU has a report on that), what probability do you assign to OKC, 9/11, Boston, being equivalent?
If you followed the OKC story at all, you realize how suspicious the gov's story is. Ditto 9/11, the recent 5 hour documentary is quite powerful.
With those priors, what the Bayesian probability do you assign?
still have jobs.
They came before Congress and lied, very boldly and very publically. Made Congress look like a bunch of impotent puppies.
And Congress's actions after that, just like many such previous actions flaunting Congresses vaunted 'oversight', reveal them to be impotent puppies.
So perhaps even most in Congress have been bought off. You have to explain why so very few people in Congress, all of whom have been very upright people, I believe, have opposed NSA or the FBI before this. I don't know anything about Wyden et al, but Ron Paul was not blackmailable, opposed the NSA. Do you suppose that only the non-blackmailable good guys out of all of those people with such intense focus on politics see political gain in this?
Congress is impotent, except in deciding what oligarchic interests to support in the next vote. None of those votes will affect any security agency to a significant degree, all of which are also in the oligarchy's interests.
Lots of psychology studies showing how even small amounts of self-interest can sway a person's decisions against all logic. Congress isn't exampt from that, so it doesn't take a murder charge or long history of drug smuggling, complete with pictures of cocaine-fueled orgies on top of mounds of $100 bills, to move a vote in Congress.
...and me at:
That's why the NSA could only tap foreign data centers, which is perfectly fine.
Exactly what is it about stealing data from everyone that is "perfectly fine"?
Moreover, what is it about being within the borders of one arbitrary country that makes the above suddenly "no longer perfectly fine"?
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS