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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."
... 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...
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.
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.
You forgot your <sarc> tags.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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
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)
Wait! Can we have them play in traffic first?
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...
I'm pretty sure they have all known about this for some time. This isn't a new thing.
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...
Hello, NSA shill! Let's be honest here. That's quite right. Exactly: no one knows how many. You know something else? It doesn't even MATTER how many: the ends DO NOT justify the means!
This, what you're doing here? This is state-sponsored terrorism! This is completely off limits. You're way, way out of line. You need to look in the mirror and realise that Snowden has more integrity in his big toe than you have in your whole body. Stop making excuses. Shut these operations down. Publish details of any vulnerabilities you know about, including ones you've created or discovered. It's unethical not to: and it's quite frankly extremely damaging to national and international security not to. And we'll fix them, because we can't trust you to.
At this point I'm not worried about blithering crazy idiots waging "war" on us with half-assed bombs: I'm worried about our own governments waging "cyber-war" on us with billion-dollar budgets. It's obvious with a moment's thought which one the greater threat is, and I'm sorry, but it's not the frothy-mouthed jihadist who's actively sabotaging efforts to secure critical internet and other infrastructure. It's YOU.
People should not have to be afraid of their governments. But they do. We're not interested in your feeble justifications. Freedom IS worth human lives: it always has been. Operations like this make the sacrifices of those who gave their lives in years long past to ensure you have at least the promise of freedom utterly meaningless, and turn our own governments - quite literally - into our adversaries. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That has to stop. It has to stop now. And it has to stop no matter what the cost, no matter what the trade-off.
Given the hard choice between anybody having privacy and nobody having privacy, even if it means sitting down and redesigning baseline security protocols and the internet at large, I'd rather make the right choice than the easy choice. It's time to roll up our sleeves and start fixing this mess, and you're not invited to the party.
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
Yes exactly look back to the Boston bombing.
At the Boston bombing we had two countries telling us to watch the bomber that he was radical and potential terrorist, his youtube channel was full of sermons by Muslim extremist clerics.
And what happened... Big Brother did nothing.
Meanwhile the NSA agents are using their dragnet of all of the worlds communications to do what? Loveint, the NSA agents are using their wiretaps to spy on their loved ones, neighbors, crushes, and anyone they want.
So we are left with two options the Government let it happen or the are to incompatent/preoccupied getting their rocks off to be allowed near their own dragnet.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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).
Fuck you. I never agreed to trade my privacy for your misplace sense of security (theater).
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
There is a third option. The NSA is not looking for terrorists. They are doing all this monitoring for other purposes.
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.
Meanwhile the NSA agents are using their dragnet of all of the worlds communications to do what? Loveint, the NSA agents are using their wiretaps to spy on their loved ones, neighbors, crushes, and anyone they want.
About 1 person per year has been caught doing that if you read the reports. I'm not going to mark that down as a major threat.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
we had two countries telling us to watch the bomber
They should have e-mailed eachother. Then we would have caught it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Terrorists?
Why would they try to stop terrorists? The sooner there is another successful attack the sooner their budget gets doubled.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
To me cloud isn't that fluffy thing in the sky. It's more like a cloud in some body of water. You know, the one you don't swim near, because that's some fish's attempt to propagate a new species.
Place something witty here
I'll gladly cover my own costs for that purpose. Heck, I'll put up for a reinforced bumper for higher efficiency.
No, all the terrorist plots that never were are thanks to my Anti-Terrorist Rock. It protects against terrorists within a 1,000 mile radius with a 90% accuracy rate. I got it when my Anti-Tiger rock so effectively protected me against tiger attacks (in New York). Sadly, I lost my Anti-Government-Overreach-Of-Power rock. I really could have used that one.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Adding the numbers that the government will surelly show, by now 10 trilons of americans were saved so far thanks to this. Really worthed destroying the human rights of basically all mankind.
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.
Liar.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
1 person per year has been caught. We also know that the analysts are nearly totally unsupervised. How many do you think were not caught? 100? 1000? It's certainly a lot more than have been caught.
Our politicians can't even agree on who our foes are so they consider everyone to be one.
I would rather have freedom than a reduction in terrorist attacks.
However, it doesn't matter how I feel, it matters how the people feel, because this is a democracy.
But a democracy doesn't work when the government makes decisions in secrecy; that's the real problem.
No, you miss the point. They intercept the traffic between google's servers/datacenter where the data flows unencrypted.
Indeed, why break SSL and then MITM the whole internet when you can just tap a few concentrated points without using wizardry. It's easier, cheaper and more reliable.
I would say the opposite: if they give themselves the trouble of "breaking inside" Google &co then it means they have to because they are just unable to break SSL.
(The NSA asking companies to deliver their private keys also comforts that impression.)
Also there are all sorts of ways to do SSL, the best attacks are those which don't use any computing power and just go around the cryptography using other unrelated phenomenons and mistakes. (ie: BEAST/BREACH/CRIME)
Beyond forgetting your sarcasm ( as pointed out below),
I'd guess we've had infinity terrorist plots foiled, then. Guess which one we didn't? The Boston Marathon. So yes, think back to Boston Marathon, where we are taught that more information does absolutely nothing except obfuscate facts. How long did it take to identify the bomber? Long enough for him to be successful.
WP has to be the worst rag going with some of the stupidest journalists possible.
Says someone who has clearly never read the Washington Times.
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.
But they refuse to talk about the spying they are conducting on Americans -- spying that clearly violates Americans' Constitutional rights.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
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
Sure, she was spotted having coffee with Waldo
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
People use Bing?
Sadly, those purposes are not even all that dramatic or impactful. Much of what the NSA does can be described as a big game of status with their counterparts in other nations. An extremely expensive pissing contest masquerading as national security.
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 NSA could detect anomalous phenomena or detect certain sociological patterns that are impossible to find unless you monitor as much as possible on a global scale.
It would be logical for them to look. If what they find can be exploited, it would be much more powerful and stealthy than any new conventional weapon.
Nobody's looking for a new a-bomb anymore, except for the acclaimed terrorists.
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?
Meanwhile the NSA agents are using their dragnet of all of the worlds communications to do what? Loveint, the NSA agents are using their wiretaps to spy on their loved ones, neighbors, crushes, and anyone they want.
About 1 person per year has been caught doing that if you read the reports.
You're right, NSA's internal oversight catches very few abuses. If only they hadn't confessed, they wouldn't have gotten "caught." Instead, they're subject to a very stern reprimand (on the merits on not getting caught), and for the most egregious offenders, the possibility of paid vacation and/or reassignment.
I'm not going to mark that down as a major threat.
So, this shouldn't affect NSA's budget or ability to continue business-as-usual, in other words. No wonder they released that report — it wasn't a major threat, it was limited hangout.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
We also know that the analysts are nearly totally unsupervised. How many do you think were not caught? 100? 1000? It's certainly a lot more than have been caught.
Do we know that? I don't think that we do. It also isn't clear that your speculation is well founded.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
... they're subject to a very stern reprimand (on the merits on not getting caught), and for the most egregious offenders, the possibility of paid vacation and/or reassignment.
From what I seem to recall reading, many of them were fired.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So I heard - but by the time the police arrived not only were they gone, but the entire coffee shop was missing.
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
Duh, that's cause the NSA needs more money and powers!
I'm kidding of course, I... oh, I've just received the nomination to run for congress from both the republican and the democrat parties...
There are other, far greater dangers than a Boston, 9/11, or even "mushroom cloud". Namely, collapse of freedom in the US via decades-long slippery slope. Once the tools of a 1984-like tyranny are built, with nothing but "you are supposed to get a warrant" stopping G. Gordon Liddy types from spying on political opponents, it's all over.
It's the lack of real, detailed oversight, uncorruptible, reviewed logging of all queries, and so on, which we need, and which will bring an end to the need to "trust us".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Let's not shout about this or they'll start arresting random people to get the figures up and support the funding party
A blog I run for the wealth
A democracy also doesn't work when the majority of citizens are more concerned about Miley Cyrus than they are about being spied on everyday.
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!
It greatly simplifies things to look and see who Congress says the President can take military action against. That is pretty clear.
Authorization for Use of Military Force
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Maybe they simply believe when the government says that "Twerk shall set you free."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
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.
Please watch the movie Running Man and you'll get an idea what happens when the government and media are too closely tied to all information. It is not for our benefit, it is for the governments benefit. I'm sure there are much better movies to show that point but at least this one has some action in it.
"Your thinking is too limited. It's obvious that they enjoy being the subject of Congressional probes about their failures, with the added chance that the boss could be fired like just happened to two Marine generals fired for negligence in Afghanistan."
Look, I am not pinning all the blame for this on any one person. There is plenty to go around. I see right now the intelligence folks getting real upset with Obama and with due cause. He's being a weasel and trying to throw them under the bus.
Ultimately the scandalous shape of the intelligence agencies has been influenced by executives and legislatures that have wanted 'tough action' or 'do everything possible' or some such formulaic, political reaction without knowing the messy details, and a judiciary all too eager to bend the law to the will of the other two branches. There's plenty of blame to go around and when Obama tries to throw his subordinates under the bus they have every right to be a bit indignant.
"And if it turned out that the attack they didn't stop was one involving Black Plague that ended up killing tens of thousands of Americans, just think of the pride they would feel. "I didn't stop that!""
A black plague attack would be extremely unlikely to kill so many, unless it was accompanied by more conventional attacks that thoroughly knocked out health care facilities as well. It was truly deadly in the middle ages, but then again, quite often so was diarrhea back then - our medicine sucked.
But sure, you have a point. It's perceived as safer, in terms of job, for these people to violate millions of peoples constitutional rights than to have to admit at some point that it is impossible, in anything vaguely resembling a free country, to be absolute sure that bad things can never happen.
This infantile philosophy of government is the root of the problem, not the particular people who happen to be pursuing their career goals at the expense of their country at any given moment.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You lost me at
by law the NSA can't
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"
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"
With only 3 dead, the Boston bombing is a really really poor excuse for additional security.
It was a fairly weak attack.
Americans just get spooked easily.
Oh my goodness. How can someone entirely miss the whole point of the Kang/Kodos election, or Douglas Adams' lizards? The point, which you appear to have somehow totally missed, is to highlight the folly of a two-party system.
The problem is not people voting for the wrong lizard, it is people voting for one of the two lizards IN THE FIRST PLACE.
So long as Democrats and Republicans continue to be rife with corruption, your civic duty is to vote third party.
Otherwise you really are throwing your vote away.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
There is a third option. The NSA is not looking for terrorists. They are doing all this monitoring for other purposes.
Why does it matter, when your organization defines who terrorists are?
The people in the US speaking out against the NSA's practices are in the process of being recategorized as political terrorists.
I'm sure chinese sponsors of the NSA will shortly be putting megabucks into lobbying congress, to ensure the NSA doesn't lose any of its surveillance privileges
Actually, NSA has said what % they spy on us. And nothing from Snowden differs with it. The issue is that all sorts of bozos are running up with all sorts of conspiracy theories rather than listen to what is being said, and applying logic.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
We fight the war your Saudi allies have started in that shitplace Afpakstan.
We also participated in the war your Saud Tyrant friends started in Yougoland.
I sincerely hope Sharia law will rule you bastards in the coming decades, my dear American.
Sharia law should be applied to all Muslims EVERYWHERE and as seriously and harshly as possible. Except the part about apostasy; Muslims should be free to leave and go join other religions.
If THIS were to happen you can bet you'd see a serious drop in the number of Muslims around the world!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
Google is a less restrained than government. Google can limit your life a lot more than the NSA can.
I suppose, hypothetically, if Google execs really wanted to make me disappear, they have enough money to hire people to make it happen, but you have to be pretty far out there to think that Google founders have it in for you personally. If Google isn't making a profit from me, they could terminate all my accounts and sell all my data, but to do anything more would dig into their profits, so they won't.
On the other hand, The US Gov has put away several people I know for drugs, frequently after investigating them on totally bogus, unrelated charges. So I've seen people's data abused by the government for more than the targeted adds Google would have sent them. And this is not even mentioning all the time and money non-convict people I know have had to sink in defending themselves from damning scraps of data.
The NSA, by law, can't even enforce laws in the US
Yeah, they wouldn't enforce anything, they can just turn over their data to agencies that could enforce within the US borders. E.g.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/
the NSA could only tap foreign data centers
1) I accidentally made the horribly unpatriotic blunder of meeting and making friends with some of the six and a half billion people who live outside the US. Some in a public high-school no less!
2) Unfortunately for the good patriots, who did a better job of shunning the dirty foreigners, the internet is pretty fuzzy on borders and as the summary points out, data is often sent to information centers outside the US even if it is just returned unaltered, back inside.
3) I have never paid attention to the geographic location of my web-surfing before and I suspect neither have you. Are we sure even Slashdot has all it's data centers in the US? Many of the liked articles aren't, so I'm sure they got some good meta data on the two of us accessing leaked documents published by foreign agencies.
Really, in the side of Government vs. Corporation, the only side that represents YOU is Government.
Depends what the conflict was. Normally, yes, in healthcare, employment rights, unconscionable EULAs, etc, these are situations where the government needs to kick corporate ass on my behalf. This situation on the other hand, the government is not protecting me from the corporations; the government is coming after me. Even if the corporations only want to protect me to ensure their profits, I don't care. Right now they are on my side.
Now, if Google was caught tapping the NSA to get my personal info, then I'd be pissed at Google, not the NSA.
Without government, Corporations would, literally, have you as slaves.
This is true, but from here on out, you really left the situation at hand to talk about political movements I'm not familiar enough with to comment on but I'm thinking 30% chance you are going to reply to my post with "Sarcasm, moron: learn to detect it!"
... they're subject to a very stern reprimand (on the merits on not getting caught), and for the most egregious offenders, the possibility of paid vacation and/or reassignment.
From what I seem to recall reading, many of them were fired.
Here's the report: https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2013/grassley_letter.pdf
I was wrong; some were suspended without pay. Some resigned. I didn't read anything about anyone getting fired, and despite the violation of federal laws that occurred in all instances, DOJ chose to prosecute in none of them.
No one got fired; only resignations, suspensions, reprimands, pay-cuts, and the like.
This thing reeks. (I wouldn't normally be fooling with this NSA garbage, but since this is cold fjord discussion, we're using the "official" stuff approved for public consumption here — not the gold Snowden brought us. Snowden's set likely didn't include material about abuses of our ill-gotten private data, as there was no need for such documentation to exist then.)
The last line is telling: "I hope that this information satisfies your request." Supposing this information didn't satisfy the senator's request? I think the Inspector General would need to "catch" more violations, but not so many as to imply that the abuse is rampant.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Why give a shit about congressional probes, when you can lie to congress with impunity?
Fired and then receive a consultant job that pays 10x as much,or just go lobby somewhere.
You can be sure the NSA will look after its own(,and they have all the dirt remember).
What makes you think a group of people wiping their ass with the constitution care about (or even understand) pride.
Lie and cheat and break laws for a living, impeccable morals by anyones standard.
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
Without doubt terrorism is just an excuse(and a very frequent and overused one at that), they are doing this to gain an espionage advantage over others pure and simple.
I would not agree with that. There was a medical tent with highly experienced medical professionals near the finish line. Otherwise the number of killed would be much more.
Nevertheless, I would agree that more people are killed in Boston in traffic accidents. And nobody really cares about it. Like installing speed control in the cars.
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.
The legal restrictions on the NSA are pretty much theoretical, they exist on the books but there is no real oversight or consequences for breaking the rules. Google, for all of it's potential dangers, is much more likely to be called to task if it breaks the rules then the NSA. Historically it has been difficult to actually enforce laws between institutions within our government, with the more powerful institutions not really being prosecutable.
Here's what gets me about the Boston incident: We know the government has basically been intercepting and monitoring all domestic communications since at least 2006, right? And we also know that the Russian government warned our government that these Tsarnesev (not going to bother looking up the spelling) brothers were coming here and up to no good, right?
So, the government is monitoring the communications of these guys who came to this country to blow shit up... and they never came across any information that would have allowed them to prevent the attack? I don't buy that shit for a second - you can't honestly tell me that in the, what, 3-4 years these assholes were here, they never, ever, not even once, said something over an electronic communications line that would warrant further scrutiny. Especially considering the warning we received from the Ruskies.
Something fishy about that.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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
Is USA becoming as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world nation
Casteism
Hello, NSA shill! Let's be honest here. That's quite right. Exactly: no one knows how many. You know something else? It doesn't even MATTER how many: the ends DO NOT justify the means!
This, what you're doing here? This is state-sponsored terrorism! This is completely off limits. You're way, way out of line. You need to look in the mirror and realise that Snowden has more integrity in his big toe than you have in your whole body. Stop making excuses. Shut these operations down. Publish details of any vulnerabilities you know about, including ones you've created or discovered. It's unethical not to: and it's quite frankly extremely damaging to national and international security not to. And we'll fix them, because we can't trust you to.
At this point I'm not worried about blithering crazy idiots waging "war" on us with half-assed bombs: I'm worried about our own governments waging "cyber-war" on us with billion-dollar budgets. It's obvious with a moment's thought which one the greater threat is, and I'm sorry, but it's not the frothy-mouthed jihadist who's actively sabotaging efforts to secure critical internet and other infrastructure. It's YOU.
People should not have to be afraid of their governments. But they do. We're not interested in your feeble justifications. Freedom IS worth human lives: it always has been. Operations like this make the sacrifices of those who gave their lives in years long past to ensure you have at least the promise of freedom utterly meaningless, and turn our own governments - quite literally - into our adversaries. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That has to stop. It has to stop now. And it has to stop no matter what the cost, no matter what the trade-off.
Given the hard choice between anybody having privacy and nobody having privacy, even if it means sitting down and redesigning baseline security protocols and the internet at large, I'd rather make the right choice than the easy choice. It's time to roll up our sleeves and start fixing this mess, and you're not invited to the party.
Your response is as an AC. You should be proud to put your name on a post like this. I have worn a military uniform and I have lost friends to war. Your response was the reason we put out lives on the line. I would be proud to call someone with your values my friend. Your words bring thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. I wish this country had a couple hundred million of you.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
Hello, NSA shill! Let's be honest here. That's quite right. Exactly: no one knows how many. You know something else? It doesn't even MATTER how many: the ends DO NOT justify the means!
This, what you're doing here? This is state-sponsored terrorism! This is completely off limits. You're way, way out of line. You need to look in the mirror and realise that Snowden has more integrity in his big toe than you have in your whole body. Stop making excuses. Shut these operations down. Publish details of any vulnerabilities you know about, including ones you've created or discovered. It's unethical not to: and it's quite frankly extremely damaging to national and international security not to. And we'll fix them, because we can't trust you to.
At this point I'm not worried about blithering crazy idiots waging "war" on us with half-assed bombs: I'm worried about our own governments waging "cyber-war" on us with billion-dollar budgets. It's obvious with a moment's thought which one the greater threat is, and I'm sorry, but it's not the frothy-mouthed jihadist who's actively sabotaging efforts to secure critical internet and other infrastructure. It's YOU.
People should not have to be afraid of their governments. But they do. We're not interested in your feeble justifications. Freedom IS worth human lives: it always has been. Operations like this make the sacrifices of those who gave their lives in years long past to ensure you have at least the promise of freedom utterly meaningless, and turn our own governments - quite literally - into our adversaries. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That has to stop. It has to stop now. And it has to stop no matter what the cost, no matter what the trade-off.
Given the hard choice between anybody having privacy and nobody having privacy, even if it means sitting down and redesigning baseline security protocols and the internet at large, I'd rather make the right choice than the easy choice. It's time to roll up our sleeves and start fixing this mess, and you're not invited to the party.
Interesting: /. or by the NSA? This is what I posted:
I just posted a response to this, and it disappeared. Was it edited out by
"Your response is as an AC. You should be proud to put your name on a post like this. I have worn a military uniform and I have lost friends to war. Your response was the reason we put out lives on the line. I would be proud to call someone with your values my friend. Your words bring thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. I wish this country had a couple hundred million of you."
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
Three possibilities:
A) The spying stuff isn't to stop terrorists.
B) They are just flat out incompetent.
C) A + B combined.
About 1 person per year has been caught doing that if you read the reports. I'm not going to mark that down as a major threat.
I don't live in the US, but I find it strange that the fact that *more than zero* NSA agents has actually done this is not bothering you. All that power, readily accessible to people with severe lacks in the integrity department; I would say that spying on your SO in this way indicates a major personality flaw. Remember that these people control more information about their fellow citizens than any other institution in the history of mankind.
From your posting history I gather that arguing with you is fruitless, so I won't try to do that, but I am left to wonder about you personally. Assuming for the moment that you're not actually connected to the NSA*: why is it so important to you to convince yourself and others that there is "nothing to see here, move along, move along"? Most people all over the world are bothered by government strangers having this kind of detailed knowledge about everything you do, and in other countries we generally try to curb their ability to do so. There is no reason to believe that this information isn't used for purposes other than fighting terrorism, in fact the contrary has been proven. The NSA have been shown to lie about nearly everything they do to everyone, including the legislators who are supposed to have some oversight, don't you find this worrying in the slightest?
I realise this post can be construed as an ad hominem, but I am really curious about what motivates you to employ such extreme contortions of reasoning necessary to convince yourself that these people are trustworthy, when they have proved conclusively, time and time again, that they are anything but.
* I don't believe that you are, mostly because if you were astroturfing Slashdot on behalf of the government you would have been spectacularly bad at your job. Come to think of it, if you're trolling, you are better than most trolls :)
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
...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