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."

Comments

At the risk of stating the obvious...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Fucking traitors.

When will the sheep look up

[Todd Palin]

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.

Re:When will the sheep look up

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up sheeple!

Re:When will the sheep look up

[Anonymous Coward]

The public doesn't give a damn that the President and Cabinet have been ordering assassinations, torture, or invasion that leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Why should they be concerned with a little spying? They are literally more concerned about the welfare of dogs (see Michael Vick), tiny fetuses, and boobies on TV.

Re:When will the sheep look up

[cdrudge]

Speak for yourself. I don't care about dogs or tiny fetuses. I DO care about boobies on TV. There should be far, far more of them, preferably exposed in one form or another.

Re:When will the sheep look up

[plover]

I think Snowden and the Grauniad are managing this very carefully and deliberately. Instead of dumping 100,000 powerpoint decks on an already jaded world, they're publishing a new menace every month. So instead of a transient explosion of anger (that the NSA is bracing for, and expecting they'll be able to manage), there is a seething resentment that's slowly building over time. First, people with cell phones got mad, and resentful. Then Merkel got mad, and got the EU all torqued. Today, people who use Google are getting mad. Next month, it'll probably be how they read every message and contact in iCloud, making all the Apple users mad. At this rate, everybody is going to take turns feeling violated a couple of times each over the next year or so.

With this schedule, the administration has to squirm and dodge and apologize every time the spotlight twitches. Even the left no longer trusts the words the President speaks these days, because he's so busy spitting out weasel words defending this out-of-control agency. My guess is there's still a really big expose yet to come that will reveal the NSA did something truly damaging to our democracy with this info, like they rigged a Federal election, or a Supreme Court assignment. And by then Congress will be facing an angry public demanding that they not only react, but over-react.

As a matter of fact, they're releasing this information so carefully orchestrated that I have to wonder who is guiding them. How would Snowden know exactly how to publish this data to maximum effect? He's a sysadmin, not a PR expert. This seems more like one of the successful KGB misinformation campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.

Re:When will the sheep look up

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's exactly what the journalists he gave it to know, or are supposed to know.

Your average FoxNNBC reporter won't, but Greenwald is smart as hell about politics (I've been reading his blog for years and it always felt like the good kind of homework) plus he's teamed up with Poitras, Scahill and others who fit the same mold, and now he just got a quarter billion dollars to work with. Oh, and the people he's been writing about recently held his fiance hostage.

Let's just put it this way - the Snowden briefings in October 2014, right before the mid-term elections, are going to make your ears bleed. If an NSA apparatchik is up for a primary election in the Spring, expect some juicy ones then, too.

Remember, the NSA has enough information to blackmail almost everybody in the Westernized world (and then some).

Re:When will the sheep look up

[AmiMoJo]

Perhaps more appropriate.

People do care. That's why high up people in the government and NSA have been making public appearances to justify what they are doing. If no-one cared they wouldn't bother. The real problem is that everyone is largely powerless to do anything about it.

In a couple of years an election will come around, and whoever you vote for they will carry on spying on you.

"secure fiber optic cables"

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Nothing is "secure" any more. "Secure" is now a one word oxymoron.

Terms of Service violation

[cohomology]

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.

Re:Why the secret data collection?

[barlevg]

Read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/30/prism-already-gave-the-nsa-access-to-tech-giants-heres-why-it-wanted-more/?hpid=z1

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.

Re:As long as you make the distinction between

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:NSA denies everything

[msauve]

âoeNSA does collect information on terrorists and our national intelligence priorities but we are not authorized to go into a U.S. companyâ(TM)s servers and take data,â Alexander said.

So, they claim they don't break into servers. So what? That's entirely different than tapping the links between the servers. And you can bet he knows the difference.

Re:I'm for this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:NSA denies everything

[93 Escort Wagon]

PARSE THE WORDING, DAMMIT.

Alexander did NOT say they didn't do it. He said "we are not authorized to go into a U.S. company’s servers and take data" (emphasis mine). That's a completely different statement.

To me, that looks to be specifically designed to avoid lying without answering the question - such as when Obama answered the question about bugging Merkel's phone with "we are not recording her conversations and will not in the future". Fortunately, in that case, the press noticed the subterfuge and followed up with a question he wouldn't respond to ("Did you, in the past, ...").

Re:I'm for this

[lister king of smeg]

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.

Re:I'm for this

[BradMajors]

There is a third option. The NSA is not looking for terrorists. They are doing all this monitoring for other purposes.

Re:I'm for this

[istartedi]

we had two countries telling us to watch the bomber

They should have e-mailed eachother. Then we would have caught it.

Re:sounds like a man in the middle

[fustakrakich]

NSA stands for National Security Asshole. You were correct the first time.

Re:I'm for this

[Arker]

Terrorists?

Why would they try to stop terrorists? The sooner there is another successful attack the sooner their budget gets doubled.

Report the NSA to the RIAA

[tekrat]

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.

Warrantless Land Line Tapping = Const. Violation

[MarkvW]

The Supreme Court is really clear on this. If you tap a land line without a warrant, you violate the Constitution.

Re:I'm for this

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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".