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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!
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.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-30/alexander-denies-nsa-infiltrated-google-to-yahoo-servers
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
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.
Americans and us dangerous foreigners, expect no sympathy. One does not have to believe in Karma to know that you deserve the domestic spying.
By that same line of thinking, one could also say that you deserve to be spied upon and drone-striked, due to your blanket, wholly uninformed generalizations about Americans.
I wouldn't say that, because I'm not an egocentric dick... but someone could, and it would be just as invalid and moronic as your hypothesis.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Is there some reason the NSA is still around?
Yes. They have a file on everyone in Congress.
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.
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.
Is there some reason the NSA is still around?
Yes. They have a file on everyone in Congress.
Not to mention that most of my fellow Americans are too poopy-pants afraid of teh terroristz to ever allow that to happen. If anybody in Congress tried to dismantle the NSA, you'd better believe that their next opponent would label them "soft on national security". That could be enough to swing many elections, thus you'll never see it done.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
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.
There is a third option. The NSA is not looking for terrorists. They are doing all this monitoring for other purposes.
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"?
"In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011."
Exactly. The defenders of this nonsense want that little bit to get skipped and forgotten.
There is no question this is illegal, they dont even have a tiny fig leaf of being able to argue they thought it might be legal. It's illegal, even the FISA "court" refused to agree to this.
So they just did it anyway. Sounds to me like despite all the noise about 'oversight' adult supervision is exactly what has been missing.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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.
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.
The Supreme Court is really clear on this. If you tap a land line without a warrant, you violate the Constitution.
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.
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
Google (and the others) shrugged and played nice with the NSA, to what extent we don't know.
Google hasn't "shrugged and played nice" with the NSA. Google has flatly and emphatically denied any cooperation. And after the Snowden disclosures began, Google started taking a hard look at internal operations to see if there's anywhere that the NSA could have gotten unauthorized access. The result was a crash company-wide initiative to encrypt all data communications -- specifically to ensure that connections between data centers couldn't be tapped.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, focused on security infrastructure. I do have a great deal of insider knowledge about Google security infrastructure, but all of the above is from Google's public statements.)
I wonder if Google can sue? And if they can, will they?
Google has file a suit to be allowed to disclose the extent of the legal, government-required information sharing. I have no idea if they could sue for any illicit taps. There is no doubt in my mind that if they could sue for damages with some hope of success, they would. This is my own opinion, not an official statement.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No you fucking moron, it means since there is no Encryption inside the "google cloud" (because it is added at the border) when they tap the links between data centres (those squares "inside" google are data centres) they get full unencrypted information.
They don't need to break encryption to do this, since google isn't encrypting the private fibre lines the NSA is tapping.
Correction: Google wasn't encrypting the private fibre lines. Google announced a month or two ago that they're now encrypting all traffic in transit, even inside.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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!"