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Glenn Greenwald: How the NSA Tampers With US Made Internet Routers
Bob9113 (14996) writes "According to Glenn Greenwald, reporting in The Guardian: 'A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers, and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers. The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal, and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully observes that some "SIGINT tradecraft is very hands-on (literally!)".'"
Surely the NSA can touch anything that Customs does.
we were innocent and naive. Now you can only trust open source.
nosig today
and, of course, China would never, ever consider doing that....
You just single-handedly killed the entire US tech industry. You murdered trust. No one will ever trust US hardware again.
Working for a defense contractor, I can say that someone is going to have fun talking with the FBI and/or the CIA and/or the NSA soon.
Happy butt raping!
Soon?
You must have missed the part where it says "A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development ".
I seriously doubt the FBI or CIA are going to go after the NSA.
It just costs US companies sales, and further encourages them to move manufacturing overseas.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What a travesty.
Well that's what I was wondering. They must import them to the US, backdoor them and then export them again. I'd bet they have chinese backdoors in addition to the US ones.
Probably not the largest in terms of sheer numbers.
Tampering with mail is a crime.
Considering the US government blatantly and consistently ignores its constitution, the document which grants it sovereignty, and is thus a rogue or fail[ing/ed] state, dismantling the intelligence apparatus would be a good thing for its citizens.
and not a moment too soon.
Just wait till the markets open tomorrow. NASDAQ down 600-800 points (at least). Nobody sane is going to purchase US-made networking gear for a very long time.
Nah, this won't budge the markets, mainly because this info was released some time ago - and it wasn't limited to router hardware.
The only reason this is being re-reported is to promote Greenwalds's book.
Is there any US made networking gear? I'd be surprised if it was more than 3 percent of the market. Maybe some high end stuff but I'd bet all the consumer grade shit is Chinese in origin. Hard to boycot made in America when it's not made in America. This article sounds like bullshit.
This is to be expected.... what is the real scope of this?
I believe that a router on the way to a German auto maker is not targeted. OK I want to believe.
I believe that a well managed site will audit and reload software. I believe that additional system admin audits behind and in front of the
hardware are justified.
For the NSA (Never Say Anything) to snoop does not bother me but they are not the only TLA in the game today.
The internet has not been friendly for a gosh long time nothing has changed.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I'm sure it's against the law to spy on anyone unless you tell them about it first.
Go whine yourself to sleep you rapist.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
US intelligence is nothing but a bunch of single-minded, useful idiots helping a few wealthy people stay that way. Such a laughable waste of life by the least able of society.
Security researcher and Tor developer, Andrea Shepherd, found something fishy:
http://www.techdirt.com/articl...
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If the NSA had restricted its spying efforts to foreign countries, would Snowden have felt morally obligated to disclose this?
The NSA spied on Americans in violation of the law. So Snowden blew the whistle. If the NSA had not spied on Americans in violation of the law....maybe Snowden would have kept his mouth shut, and this amazing foreign intelligence network would have continued to function unabated.
I am not saying that it is OK for the NSA to spy on foreign governments to this degree...I am just saying that it would not have broken the (American) law and may not have pushed Snowden to blow the whistle.
The NSA got greedy. It's as simple as that.
Ah yes because the NSA says me so. You know what i think ? I think NSA told us to distrust other vendor because they have no back door in them.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Had Snowden only leaked the unconstitutional domestic spying, he would be a hero. It should be very clear now that those leaks were just a cover for treason. His goal seems to be nothing less than the dismantling of our entire intelligence apparatus.
You can't hide an intelligence operation of this scale forever, this was going to come out sooner or later, Snowden is an inevitability. That having been said, while your concern over how the USA's ability to find out what color underwear everybody else is ordering online is a valid one, consider the economic impact of this. I'm sure Cisco and a whole horde of other US based network equipment manufactures were thrilled to the core when they woke up one morning and found out that the NSA just crashed their sales and to add insult to injury ensured that in the long term their overseas competitors will get a whole lot more business as governments and corporations look for secure and preferably domestic sources of network equipment. Maybe the fact that it was all done in the name of patriotism and national security will more than compensate these US businesses for any financial losses that result from this activity?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'd assume this wouldn't only be US made networking gear. It probably also includes networking gear that is made elsewhere, shipped to the US and then re-sold and exported to its final destination (as is the case with most US products). If you order a Linksys, D-Link or Netgear router, it may be manufactured in China/Taiwan/Japan, but it almost certainly passed through the US before making it to their Canadian, Mexican, European, etc customers.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Looks to me like those spying on anyone, anywhere, are the real traitors.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This is far beyond espionage and about the common man. Espionage is some fake shit hollywood wants you to believe is real, the glamorization of getting ass fucked by surveillance and other perceived "cool" stuff the federal government makes to justify the fake terror organizations they set up in each in every country. Currently it's Ukraine.
Ever hear about this? http://swampland.time.com/2013/09/27/whos-watching-the-watchmen-nsa-employees-caught-spying-on-partners/
I suggest you slowly and calmly turn off CNN, Fox news, and wherever else you have justified your attitude and realize the complete betrayal of trust the NSA has been engaged in for over 50 years now.
People are waking up to the fact that the entire system is rigged. Every war, conflict, thing that happens on a global perception scale has been carefully scripted to gain more control over money and resources, and the media is there to keep people like you still believing that we should be good little slaves because we need "Espionage".
When 13 families run the world "Espionage" doesn't mean shit.
NSA's message:
Beware: we're doing it to them so they could be doing it to us.
Of course they could not go public with part one to they only publicized part two.
That doesn't matter. We now know that the NSA has backdoors in them. We highly suspect that the Chinese also have backdoors in them.
The question is how long it will take the other nations to start their own chip fabrication plants and build their own routers / switches / etc.
Since nothing from us can be trusted (even by us) then they should be building their own stuff which they can trust more than our stuff.
The NSA's own internal watchdog group found that NSA snooping power was used to spy on 'love interests' of several NSA employees.
If their own internal watchdog group is telling the world that there's something going on here, it's a bold move to claim "all the disclosures released so far have shown government ACTIVELY protecting civil liberties of Americans"
Imagine if an organization such as the ACLU had access to all internal NSA snooping records. Are you telling me that you believe that no civil liberties have been violated by the NSA? Alternatively, are you telling me that we have zero rights because the NSA is allowed to spy on everyone doing anything at any time for no reason at all?
Now they've been found out it's going to hurt USA's export market.
I don't think he could get any whiter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
You need to be one to understand one. US, especially the international cyber security related ranks of government, were worried about the security of networks, operating on Chinese made Huawei brand routing equipment. Has anyone give it a thought "why" ? Because, they were doing the same thing to the US manufactured equipment and up until Huawei undercut Cisco prices and made inroads to the US networks, they didn't say anything. I am just laughing why people are getting so upset at this point in game. Your privacy and mine as well, is no more than a joke.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Sorry, I've given up on all this Spy vs. Spy nonsense. Frankly I'm surprised that there hasn't been a story where the NSA employes pixies who spread magic fairy dust on the Internet Tubes and the secret encryption keys float magically in the air. Sure, a lot of what Snowden took possession of and released was most likely based in fact but a lot of it is starting to sound a bit more ridiculous. If this article has even 1% of credibility I would have thought that any security firm outside the US would have been able to confirm it. Once it's confirmed then I'll worry. If it's not confirmed then it's another red herring.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Just curious, does that include Alan Turing spying on Germans? Or the UK intelligence intercepting Zimmerman's telegram?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I have no problem with the NSA spying on the rest of the planet.
That's what they are paid to do.
I'm even fine with them intercepting my inbound stuff with a warrant or FISA order if I was connected via phone or other means to known enemies overseas.
Outright spying on me in my day to day life tho, that is right out.
Re-Flash it. Done. Or better yet get a reputable firm to validate the Firmware via CRC check etc. vs. OEM.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Well, they could get a friendly nation to detain his partner, question him for 9 hours and confiscate his electronic devices. Oh wait, that didn't work.
Sorry to break it to you mate, but freedom isn't absolute. While the people who guard those freedoms are not perfect (no human is), they deserve a little credit.
You do know they put the branding on them there don't you. It comes here to be sold to US consumers. I can't believe anyone is stupid enough to buy a router made in china and then shipped out of the US. You have to know the only possible reason for it to come to the US and then leave again is that it's been altered. Anyone who falls for that is so incompetent you shouldn't really need to spy on them.
I got a -1 for flamebait, with people telling me I was full of crap...just a few days ago when I explained how the NSA is standing in the way of critical needed upgrades in infrastructure because there software and hardware do not work with 10GigE or IPv6 among other things.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
We may have some growing pains, and might not stay as dominant was we were post WW2. I don't think we will fall as a nation though, we have too many natural resources and big bombs.
Because war and peace makes no difference...
No, they don't deserve any credit at all, they are by definition part of the problem.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Citation? Not that I expect an AC to respond, but this sounds like you pulled it out of your ass.
"Sorry Mr President, we have confirmed there is an armed nuclear weapon heading to Washington, but it is arriving by mail so there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent it. Trust me, an anonymous coward told me so."
So, as a business I ness US made routers so the chinese slave labor me out of the market, but in my home I need chineese made routers so the NSA isn't hacking my local computer.
Or I just get both, and put them back to back, and hope the US NSA never cooperates with the chineese NSA [equivalent]
I don't think the NSA is operating for the good of the US. I think the NSA is operating for the good of the NSA.
What is the NSA? A collection of security services companies milking a black budget with zero accountability and oversight. That's how this leak happened in the first place. Shitty contractors overcharging and under providing. All it took was one ordinary guy with a conscious to unravel the whole thing.
It's not just that we're being betrayed. We're being ripped off to make a buck at the same time.
Arguably, it is taking possession of private property without due process of law. Also note that the Bill of Rights applies to the government wherever it is, not just to citizens within the borders.
1) Anti-Establishment candidates are often marginalized by the establishment, by civil methods and later by authoritarian ones depending on the threat and how authoritarian. Example: Ghandi. MLK. The extreme repression was their strength; the wise establishment doesn't empower their enemies.
2) If you can elect somebody, they are a minority and unless it is a dictatorship they can't do anything on their own. Continued marginalization and undermining them with their base as they are forced to compromise to get anything done at all. Example: Paul Wellstone, Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul (a rare case of no compromise and doing nothing.)
3) Use the system against the elected officials. As the 2006 NSA leaker stated, Obama was observed before he was a senator. Officials have things to hide; even honest ones must make tough decisions that can look horrible if made public. Catch-22, such as the intelligence committee members who can't even tell other's in office what they know. Remember, Wyden said when Snowden leaks came out that it was just the tip of the iceberg and he couldn't talk about any of it. Remember, the 1st Snowden leak was they were spying on everybody. that was the tip of the iceberg?!
Example: possibly everybody who did a 360 after getting in office.
4) Politicians can only address a few issues at a time; much of their time is spent eating shit from their predecessors and trying to convince people it will taste good after they add their seasoning and most their time is spent raising money.
5) Press has been captured. You have to go foreign to get anything and they are being terrorized. (Funny how much "treason" is applied to foreigners.) When it's a big issue the press backs the government position; without even the need to be asked. Self censorship is the norm and patriotism is supporting the gov PR. Remember, the press didn't back the pentagon papers until it was already published and that was back during better days.
Franken is my senator. he is just OK. He is also at risk of being replaced by a complete sellout.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Nothwithstanding the fact that I don't think a single person involved in any of this is guilty of treason, you are blatantly wrong about a few things, like this:
In fact, all the disclosures released so far have shown government ACTIVELY protecting civil liberties of Americans.
This is just wrong, the NSA's net is so large that they can and do collect a lot of information about Americans not suspected of a crime. The three hops rule means that they collect data from millions of people who are so loosely connected with a particular suspect as to make it so that there is no real connection there. The recent proposals of changing how the NSA works also removed the privacy advocate. If the federal government's priority was protecting Americans' civil liberties, why did they remove the person whose job that would be?
Remember, the goal is to expand the powers of government.
The goal of what? The goal of the constitution is to limit, not expand, the powers of government. That is spelled out very clearly. The entire purpose of the constitution is to protect the citizens from the government.
Your role as a citizen is to make sure government continues to function and do its job, because that's what we as citizens have decided.
What happens when the government stops doing its job, or starts abusing its power? If that is happening, wouldn't you want to know about it?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I work for a company that ships laptops, desktops, and routers to customers overseas and I'm going to say that there are some really weird things going on in transit that I can't explain. Particularly with international shipments, but not necessarily exclusively. I've personally heard from numerous customers who've had there systems seemingly opened in transit. Not just the packages, but the actual cases. They don't even always do a good job of re-connecting and re-sealing everything. Its obviously the cases that have been opened too as snap-style pieces are left disconnected (hard drives). No amount of vibration or force will cause a disconnect.
While I've suspected something like this I've never attempted to have a customer take a hash of the disk image and compare it to a before-shipment hash. Given this is a problem I think I might just go ahead and start doing this. The problem now is actually finding a customer who is going to be able to repeat the process on the other end.
"just people applying 20th century ideas to 21st century conflicts."
All too true. Although the results may be far worse than becoming a "quaint has-been". To expand on your point: ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing.
And also on intelligence specifically:
http://www.phibetaiota.net/201...
"A failure to realize this irony will produce ever greater problems down the road as we develop ever greater technologies that can become ever greater amplifiers of destructive impulses (including self-replicating nanotech and biotech) or ever greater inhibitors of constructive impulses (like pervasive surveillance to enforce arbitrary unhealthy norms as a "war on the unexpected"" [see Schneier]). So, how can we have an intelligence community in the 21st century that is truly worthy of the name? How can we have an intelligence community that truly helps prevent misadventures that waste trillions of US dollars while millions of US children grow up in poverty and tens of millions of US citizens lack access to health care or even adequate nutritious food?"
And:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...
"As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach."
"Good will" is an important resource. Slowly the USA has been squandering what goodwill it including from WWII. Fortunately, good will can be a renewable resource depending on the political choices the USA makes going forward.
For example, imagine how much goodwill the USA would have right now if we had given the people of Iraq US$6 trillion dollars (US$300
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
... I just can't imagine how anyone would be offended or in the least bit concerned over this.
This was posted in 2010. In the last 4 years everyone has stopped buying any and all electronics in fear. I wonder if anyone will ever use a computer again.
No idea why you're being downmoderated. It's *absolutely* the NSA's job to eavesdrop on foreigners. That's what they're being paid to do.
While it is the NSA's job to spy on people, that's traditionally been something you do against your adversaries, not your allies. I mean, it's one thing if we're talking about tapping the USSR's undersea cables. They had nuclear-tipped ICBMs pointed at us. It's quite another thing when we're talking about tapping the phone of Angela Merkel. She's the democratically elected president of an allied NATO state. I mean, up until that point she and Obama had a pretty good working relationship, so if he really wanted to know what she was thinking, he probably could have you, know, asked her.
Just curious, does that include Alan Turing spying on Germans?
Nazi Germans were not "anyone, anywhere" — they were targeted participants in on-going, escalating armed state aggression in the European theater, Atlantic and North Africa, whose military planning generated actionable intelligence. None of this applies to the NSA's current operations or their worldwide foreign and domestic victims.
Citation? Not that I expect an AC to respond, but this sounds like you pulled it out of your ass.
"Sorry Mr President, we have confirmed there is an armed nuclear weapon heading to Washington, but it is arriving by mail so there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent it. Trust me, an anonymous coward told me so."
Since you asked for a citation under US Law does this count . A little searching could also pull up the laws governing tampering with mail in other countries as well..
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I have no issue with three letter agencies doing the job they were tasked to do - provide the USG with foreign intelligence gathered offshore. The problem is when they turn those same techniques inward.
And lest the foreigners cry - your governments are spying on the US too, often on behalf of your nationally domiciled corporations.
NSA apologist trope #57: [insert foreign country that has no 4th amendment] routinely does the same thing we do.
This is one of the dumbest arguments in the NSA apologist playbook. Gee, we are as bad as China when it comes to spying on our populace. Great job!
More likely we will just change. We were born as a country in a revolution, and only a ballot box stands between us and another one.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Try not to be distracted by the hyperbole of GP. Companies aren't going to go bankrupt or lose all their large international contracts overnight.
What'll happen is a gradual shift away from doing business with U.S. based companies. Nor will the business necessarily go to the Chinese counterparts. Instead, what'll likely happen is niche local players will suddenly find that some new doors have opened up. And regulators will give U.S. companies more trouble when they're making large acquisitions of foreign (or domestic, from their POV) entities. And maybe some overseas companies will refuse to do business in the U.S. or not be allowed by their governments to form U.S. subsidiaries, though that's far less likely a direct result of this revelation.
Chances are, this will isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world a bit more, and maybe that's a good thing, or maybe it's a bad thing. Corporations will feel the sting particularly hard, but the people willl survive.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Some of our allies don't mind that we spy on them, especially if they are not allowed to spy on themselves. Then we can spy on them and share the intel with them. They still get mad if we spy on their high level politicians and business secrets, and of course they have to denounce our spying if their people find out about it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
By what 'tradition'? Nation states and their predecessors have always spied on friend and foe alike.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
"It seems to me the only rational approach is to assume that nothing can be trusted and and act accordingly. Assume that whatever you are doing online is being observed by someone or anyone ..."
I've been saying to make the best of this since at least 2008 (chain of citations): :-) :-) :-)"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-d...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
https://groups.google.com/foru...
"Our biggest advantage is that no one takes us seriously.
And our second biggest advantage is that our communications are monitored, which provides a channel by which we can turn enemies into friends.
And our third biggest advantage is we have no assets, and so are not a profitable target and have nothing serious to fight over amongst ourselves.
Or more recently:
"A way forward through openness? (Score:5, Informative)"
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Of course, growing up in a Christian ideological environment, the idea is nothing new that all my actions are under constant surveillance 100% 24X7 by an omniscient entity who can even read my thoughts and decides my ultimate fate day by day... Just got to make the best of it... :-)
Not saying that means it will end well if humans are entrusted with that kind of surveillance power... Although "The Light of Other Days" and "The Transparent Society" are both books to think about...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
It's probably only a matter of time anyway until the halls of all governments are saturated with nanotech "smart dust" by all sorts of actors (see Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" or some other stories for examples). Governments might want to get their houses in order before then... In that sense, Manning and Snowden might both just be the tip of the iceberg -- even if smart dust like that is still probably ten or twenty years off...
Or also from me in 2008:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post...
"Wikipedia. GNU/Linux. WordNet. Google. These things were not on the visible horizon to most of us even as little as twenty years ago. Now they have remade huge aspects of how we live. Are these free-to-the-user informational products and services all there is to be on the internet or are they the tip of a metaphorical iceberg of free stuff and free services that is heading our way? Or even, via projects like the RepRap 3D printer under development, are free physical objects someday heading into our homes? If a "post-scarcity" iceberg is coming, are our older scarcity-oriented social institutions prepared to survive it? Or like the Titanic, will these social institutions sink once the full force of the iceberg contacts them? And will they start taking on water even if just dinged by little chunks of sea ice like the cheap $100 laptops that are ahead of the main iceberg?"
Or in this case, will 20th-century-mindset security institutions start sinking when their procedures are dinged by revelations moved via small cheap USB sticks apparently carried around by Manning and Snowden? Really, how "secure" or wise is a plan in the 21st century when it depends on 100% secrecy forever? Shouldn't so-called security experts employed at great expense by governments know better by now? Security by obscurity is problematical, especially over the
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Isn't it still possible to have a trustworthy firewall as separate hardware, that can inform you if there are any inappropriate data transfers? It would seem like an important tool to have if only for virus/malware analysis.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
No problem. Just don't sign for it.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Disk image might be the same. The Snowden docs include things like hardware replacement of Ethernet jacks and firmware backdoors. Nasty stuff, and completely undetectable without destructive teardown or an X-ray machine and a ridiculous amount of time.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I think the cable box is more of a speed bump to revolution than the ballot box is, since so few use the latter.
Except we do know they are engaged in mass domestic surveillance, which is NOT what our intelligence services are supposed to be doing.
There's a word for people who claim to uphold the rule of law while breaking it: "hypocrites" (preferably also "felons", but good luck with that).
Where does it say that? It is a series of affirmative restraints on our government.
You are assuming the source you are looking at is the same one loaded on the device. If you change out the software on the device you may as well assume its no different than a binary blob.
And if the change is to the hardware that the open source software runs on? same idea as a hyper-visor rootkit, the software could be as fancy and open source as you want its still compromised since the hardware could easily send a copy of everything and react to a signal without the software ever knowing about it.
It's their job to spy on enemies of the state. Foreigners is a broad brush that is a slippery slope to domestic monitoring. Actually we are already there.
And that is a very good thing.
Spying prevents war, it's credited with preventing the Cuba missile crisis from being a very real nuclear war because each sides spying revealed not only how serious the issue was but what was required to end the threat (the Soviets requirement was removing nuclear missiles from Turkey). And that's just a single incident, spying has probably prevented more wars than anyone can imagine.
Addressing both your comment and the grandparent comment: this distinction of allowing non-free software is part of what distinguishes the older free software movement from the younger open source movement. RMS has been talking and writing about this critical distinction for years.
Consider the following from "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software":
In other words, open source won't endorse software freedom for its own sake. That movement was designed to never raise the issue of software freedom in order to promote a developmental methodology thought to lead to more reliable, more powerful programs. That methodology is fine as far as it goes (everyone likes powerful robust programs) but as we're seeing with the Snowden revelations, that methodology doesn't go far enough. RMS realized this very early on and has been providing ethical counterarguments since the open source movement began (older essay, newer essay).
This difference explains what we're seeing in the very different approaches taken in Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel versus the GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel. Linux-libre's distinction is that this fork removes the blobs that come with the Torvalds fork of the Linux kernel. Torvalds includes nonfree code meant to make the kernel run on more hardware which places a high value on convenience at the cost of software freedom. Linux-libre values software freedom instead. As a result, Linux-libre doesn't run on as much hardware and might not take advantage of everything modern hardware can do, but one gains a system they are allowed to fully inspect, share, and modify—software freedom. Linux-libre lets users make sure the software does only what that user wants that program to do. RMS, as recently as his recent responses to /. questions, encouraged readers to reverse engineer hardware in order to fully document hardware ("The parts of Linux we need to replace are the nonfree parts, the "binary blobs". [...] The main work necessary to replace the blobs is reverse engineering to determine the specs of the peripherals those blobs are used in. That's a tremendously important job -- please join in if you can."). This work leads to increased support for fully free operating systems, including fully free support in Linux-libre.
Increased security is one of the things you get with the pursuit of software freedom for its own sake. I think RMS very much recognizes the security enhancements that come along with Linux-libre and why his org
Digital Citizen
All those protests about HUAWEI - the real reason we scared everyone about them is for precisely the opposite reason than was claimed. HUAWEI is not in the pocket of the NSA, which makes them useless from an espionage standpoint. The problem isn't that their equipment has spyware, it's that it doesn't (as far as the NSA is concerned.)
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
The servers, routers, etc are NOT coming from America. They are being shipped via China. For example, Cisco does not import the routers and then re-export them to say china, or Venezuela, etc. They are shipped direct.
What I find funny is that so many miss the fact that many backdoors have been found on equipment that was shipped directly from China and not touched by ANY AMERICANS. And yet, we have greenwald and snowden ignoring what is going on with Russia, AQ, China, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
BS. Why do you think that India banned them? Because they found it on their routers that were sent directly from China to India.
Ppl like you are beyond foolish, or are simply Chinese trolls.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lie. Spying enables war, it creates the illusion of having sufficient control and being able to go in and kill whom ever you want and win. Spying the disrespecting of other countries laws and their citizens rights and is the peremptory action to war. The death penalty for espionage still exists in many countries and with good reason. Espionage routinely enables and uses organised crime in targeted countries, ignoring laws also covers ignoring laws like murder and extortion the assumption by those countries actively engaged in hostile espionage are that the targeted countries citizens have no rights and are to be considered sub-human to be abused at will as long as they hostile country can get away with it. It is pretty clear the US has become the enemy of world peace, quite simply because there is not enough profit in it, for the select few.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
If I'm a foreign buyer for this stuff... say a bank in Germany that wants to build a data center... I can't buy American stuff anymore. That's a huge blow to US tech.
Look... I'm okay with pulling this crap against brutal dictatorships. But I suspect they're just doing it to anyone they're even vaguely interested in... I have to assume that because there's so much double talk and evasion on the issue along with apparently no oversight or auditing.
If this sort of crap continues then the companies are at they very least going to have to use protected shipping methods that guarantee no tampering. A guard going with the shipment 24 hours a day from the factory to the delivery location would be an example.
And of course, any organization or customer that is responsible to data security is going to have increasing trouble trusting US businesses with anything.
This is incredibly damaging. The NSA needs to do their job without destroying the US tech industry in the process.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Really? How is spying on an Australian being a traitor to America? Are they being a "traitor" to some organization I'm unaware of where we swore an oath to keep Australians free from snooping? Is there a constitutional amendment I missed where foreigners living in foreign territory are protected from unreasonable search and seizure?
Yes, if they meet the definition of "traitor". Because "those spying on anyone, anywhere" does not meet any definition I know of.
Or, another way, your statement is just as true as the gp.
I prefer to think of it as redefinition, where the meaning of treason is whatever supports gp post.
On one hand, we have the idea that all spying is wrong. On the other, some spying is okay, if it supports the greater good.
If I misdial an international number and get a terrorist burn phone, does it make sense to flag me as metadata to be recorded in the future? If I repeatedly call burn phones, am i a greater risk? If I have friends I met in college who are fighting for their freedom and lives in an unpleasant country - fighting the same fight that my country is fighting but from the inside - how does my country know which side I'm on?
If some spying is good, we have to define where to draw the line. My parents were killed 20 years ago, when CCTV was not prevalent. Would you support CCTV cameras for the purposes of finding their killer(s)? That seems like unnecessary spying given the hours of tape that would get captured, but it also seems to be for the greater good.
So, can we define clear lines that don't require interpretation, which clearly defines the good guys from the bad guys and the targets from the protected? And we have to keep in mind that the state preserving itself is not the same as the state preserving its citizens, so the state is not necessarily the best decision maker. When a revolution happens, the state finds itself on the wrong site of history, and is the bad guy. They will abuse any power granted them at that point.
So how do you grant UK permission to make the call, while giving the Americans the ability to revolt?
The purpose of spying is to gain political, military, or economic gain. Things change. If you don't spy on everyone you won't see those changes happen before they hit you. One of the reasons Obama had such a good relationship with Germany is because he knew what they wanted, not just what they told him.
True. If you don't know what another country is doing you will assume the worst. If they are buying uranium centrifuges and you don't know they are building a nuclear reactor you will assume they are making bombs. If they are buying guns and you don't know they are having a civil war you will assume they mean to invade.
Here is a little logic lesson, take heed of the flow because I realize that logic is difficult for people.
Spying in and of itself can be considered a gray area. We can justify spying on enemies, and not spying on friends.
Deceit on the other hand is always bad. There is really no gray area in that one, try as you like there is no way to convert deceit to honesty.
The issue with the NSA, and say Australia, is that the US Government as a whole has lied to the people that the politicians and office holders are supposed to be representing. Repeatedly lied I'll add, and those lies are all in the open and well documented.
This takes us to an issue of trust, and people simply have no more trust for the US Government. People in offices have lied not just about the NSA, but everything possible. WMDs in Iraq, the TPP, and Fast and Furious are good recent examples, but The Gulf of Tonkin and COINTELPRO were just as real and lies as well. So we have a history of liars holding offices to overcome somehow.
Spying by itself may not be treasonous (unless you are breaking the laws defined in the US Constitution), but providing arms to gangs that kill US citizens surely counts. I would say that declaring war on fabricated and falsified information also counts because it cost thousands of US lives and endangers our country as a whole. A politician failing to protect the US Constitution and trying to subvert our Government also counts as treason, which is why the last 3 Presidents have all been brought up on impeachment charges.
It's the lying in addition to performing acts the US Constitution prohibits that make these acts treasonous.
More likely, they tried to install their backdoor and found the space already ocupied on some devices by the Chinese backdoor. This may be how the other backdoor was discovered. The firmware on some devices didn't match the manufactures binary and filled space the NSA was going to use.
The truth shall set you free!
American companies have shown they will do anything the government asks. So those backdoors are not installed by the NSA, they came like that from the factory. And for simplicity, they probably back-doord everything but have a secret (port knocking) key to enable the backdoor code.
Given the level of resources available to the NSA, once they have their hands on your hardware you should consider it permanently untrusted. It's not just that they could have reflashed the firmware, they could have installed a radio keylogger or maybe a radio receiver that allows direct control of the computer itself. The power supply could be redone to transmit your crypo-keys onto the power lines for all you know. Now you just have to figure out how to get hardware before they get their hands on it. Given their resources, that might be difficult.
Yet another thing when it's an Indonesian cigarette company being spied on for commercial reasons. Burning through the goodwill of allies just to help out a campaign donor with some trade secrets picked up by spies is IMHO a ridiculous abuse of power.
Alternatively, are you telling me that we have zero rights because the NSA is allowed to spy on everyone doing anything at any time for no reason at all?
Well since you ask... what "rights" do you really have in a Government that ignores it's own Constitution, drafts laws to allow it's lawbreaking after it gets caught, and who's local Law Enforcement routinely twists and misapplies laws against citizenry?
Seems your "rights" are entirely subjective and likely to change at a moments notice.
Tell a few of their customers to ship back items which appear to have been tampered with, and compare them at your end. That's appropriate tech support. You have no idea who's doing the tampering or why, and it's worth finding out.
I hope customers can replace those crypto bits themselves?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think he meant people who engage in mass, untargeted surveillance of entire populations. Not spying on anyone at all for any reason.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I heard rumours that the Chinese firms who clone routers were just replacing the secret keys in the backdoors with their own and shipping them as-is. That kind of thing got Phil Zimmerman in hot water.. why isn't Cisco in hot water?
I heard the Chinese were just using the backdoors that the OEM puts in (possibly for the government) by simply replacing the secret keys in the firmware.
It's really simple. An individual looking at specific targets with real oversight is fine. Mass collection of data, especially metadata, is wrong and treasonous. It's super convenient and doubtless would prevent/solve some crimes, but freedom is more valuable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I believe the proper term is now shocked and awed.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Which Creator are we talking about here? I ask out of interest; and of course also because I have never seen any evidence of such a being. My point here is NOT that humans don't have rights or that these aren't reasonable and fundamental, but I think it is time to abandon the pious lingo and try to find the valid reasons that undoubtedly are there, somewhere. After all, if the only reason why these rights are unalienable is that they are God-given and somehow enforced by Him, then they can be thrown out when your religious affiliations change, as they so easily do. The fact is that the god most, if not all, people claim to follow, is a concept created to suit their own preferences and petty prejudices, and personally wouldn't want my freedom and rights to depend on the whims of the prevailing, religious wind.
Sure, but on a limited scale. GCHQ and the NSA have basically said it's fine for other nations to hack all our systems and completely pwn our countries if they can. No limits, collect everything and use it all for the most trivial industrial espionage or political gain. Destroy all good will, make sure British and US products have no credibility and wreck out data storage industries. Make sure citizens are at greater risk by installing backdoors and weakening security systems.
What do you think is the biggest threat to you? Terrorist attack or becoming the victim of hacking, identity theft, losing your job because the company's secrets were stolen etc.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your example of spying on allies being a good thing is to refer to the Cuban missile crisis? Sorry I didn't realise USA and USSR were great buds at the time.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Which Creator are we talking about here?
Does it matter? FWIW, I'm a Buddhist, and most of the Founders were Deists.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Sadly, we can't take the luxury of distributing communications devices that we don't have the ability to tap.
Certainly says something about the state of the civilizations on this planet.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I think it's somewhat of "we have all your data. If you are suspected of anything wrong, we will look at it. Don't do anything wrong."
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
is much more common than people supposed.
The dystopic future in the series Continuum doesn't look so very far-fetched to me.
We're already a third of the way there !
Actually, the funny part is, that spying on Mrs. Merkel phone is the NSAs job. And she's got a number of people whose job it is to prevent such spying. Technically, btw, as far as it's known, only Merkel's private (or technically party) mobile has been intercepted. In effect most relevant stuff was certainly interceptable => because her communication partners have to rely on "normal" communication systems designed to be easily intercepted.
Spying on the whole German population is the big issue. Mass-surveillance is a problem, it violates basically the 4th ammendment (and their local counterparts, e.g. in Germany, as you've mentioned the example, it's the "Fernmeldegeheimnis", communication privacy that is a constituional basic right). One of the things that was disliked about the Britons back than that they used to do basically warrentless searches, for whatever reason.
Now consider that the NSA wants all electronic communication world wide, and that naturally includes communication by US citizens at home. So think, if the population (because the political caste in D.C. is way less interested) manages to forbid domestic mass surveillance, And they manage to make it stick (against a bureacracy shredded into multiple layers of secrecy for the "common good", invoking "national security" every second sentence). Now what do you think will keep the NSA from asking their British friends to do some spying, under supervision for them? A good pretence would be e.g. "Safety of NATO personal deployed in the US", that's what the German BND (which is mostly forbidden to work inside the borders) did, just ask the allied agency that have the right to spy (via the NATO treaty and related "formerly secret" treaties) in Germany. Not probable, but the British inteligence community is very intimate with the US, even more than the other members of the "Five Eyes" club.
So basically, what we've got are highly unregulated secret organizations (where even the official oversight, usually from the legeslative branch has not enough insight, and still has to rely on the perps themselves not to lie), which have shown in the past a tendency to work around any legal issues very creatively, by doing the illegal thing (and cover it under the "national security" tag, to avoid scrutiny), by interpreting law in fascinating ways (e.g. creative interpretations of the Patriot Act, rubber stamp it at the FISA Court, and again we wouldn't want independent analysis if the legal creative interpretation is okay, so it's a question of "national security"), ...
And if everything else breaks, split the bad stuff up internationally, there are enough allied spooks that are not explicitly forbidden to do the bad deed in question, ...
"And no, Senator, we cannot tell you that, because that information "belongs" to an allied foreign agency, and sharing it would endanger international cooperation, and you know, that cannot be allowed, because the bad bad terrorists would win."
What good relationship? The reason Obama has been popular for some time is related more to the fact that the Bush administration had any number of very unpopular policies here around, and Obama claimed that he'll change them when elected. The sad part is, that he did not change them, he continued them or even enlarged them. The only big promise that he kept at least partially, was stopping all these "illegal stuff". Alas, he stopped it be legalizing the practices in most cases, so lawyerish he's correct, he stopped all these "illegal practices", although many people (voters or not) probably took him to mean that he'll stop the practices and not just legalize them ;)
I may be a little off-base but there used to be a time in the U.S. that our legal system was premised upon actual "misdeeds" not "thought crime". We now appear to live in an age in which crimes are "manufactured" out of obscure, fragmented and ambiguous data elements that could "potentially" lead to a criminal act. Then the purported perpetrator[s] are accused of "plotting" destruction even before the act is committed. I think people should be able to think anything they want. Even engage in ambiguously and potentially criminal acts for freedom's sake. What makes the difference is whether or not the act is actually carried out. Actual destructive actions should be the punishable offense, not thinking about it. Sure, this may place a heavy burden on law enforcement but I'm willing to accept that in exchange for personal freedom[s]. Besides, we are ALL ultimately responsible for our own self-protection. That requires that we be aware of our surroundings. To live with a certain degree of "precaution". To hone our personal skills in detecting potentially dangerous situations and utilizing a considerable degree of "street smarts". There are way too many people who have abandoned their personal responsibility for their own safety. They live as innocent children, expecting the world to be a "peaceful and enjoyable" trip to an amusement park where life is happy all the time and just kick back and wait for the guys in the white coats [or blue, or grey or whatever] to come and save them. We all like to think of ourselves as "adults" but we don't what the personal responsibility of acting seriously as adults. Rather, children wanting all the privileges of rank but little responsibility. One of the things we are ALL personally responsible for is our own safety. But most people think that responsibility falls upon someone else. Those who complain about safety but are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for it are creating a burden upon society. It's time everyone stopped whining about "safety" and started acting like adults.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
gp is a db, but the point still stands that it's the NSA's job to provide signals intelligence outside of the US.
I do not doubt this is happening but I am surprised there has not been more direct evidence. All it takes is one forged certificate that could only have been signed by a certificate authority or one example of network equipment with a designed in exploit. I assume the NSA makes considerable effort to hide what they are doing but there are capable interests who would seem to benefit from revealing it.
NSA apologist trope #57: [insert foreign country that has no 4th amendment] routinely does the same thing we do.
Does the Fourth Amendment apply to the NSA's spying on foreigners?
Don't believe. The only resource the U.S. still has [of any quantity] is natural gas and coal. We get a majority of our other resources [rare metals, gems, wood, etc.] comes from overseas [Africa, S. America, Asia, etc.]. The premise that the U.S. could be self sufficient is ludicrous anymore. It is one of the reasons the U.S. is so aggressive militarily, to maintain hegemony over other people's natural resources. Military might has become the main mechanism for U.S. "superiority" globally. That is one reason the "hawks" in Congress keep insisting we must maintain a strong military. Kind of reminds me of Napoleon. Unfortunately, all [good] things must end. Literally every "empire" has collapsed eventually. And the emerging powers in Asia [China] and Eastern Europe [ Russia] are on the verge of empire now. Ultimately, it will mean a decreased standard of living because resources go where the power is.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
What happens when the definition of "doing something wrong" changes?
file:
I think it's somewhat of "we have all your data. If you are suspected of anything wrong, we will look at it. Don't do anything wrong."
Sorry but you are living totally in the past. The security services don't just take your information they sell it on for money or trade it for access or other secrets. And guess what some of the people they sell it on to are criminals, spying and crime have been brother and sister ever since they were invented. (Good) Criminals often even make the best spies, they are resourceful, independent, good at deceit and lying and hiding - and they always have a good excuse for 'nefarious' activities if caught. Even worse today, the services are made up of many small private companies - this allows for greater believable deniability and compartmentalisation - but some of those companies are deliberately crooked or bent or even linked to organized crime. Crime is also a great way to launder money so it cant be traced back to the government. Today the NSA aren't Uncle Sam they are corporations like Halliburton or Facebook or dozens of nameless holding companies around the world, or they are your pimp or your drug dealer or that guy on the corner selling child porn. In spying being a criminal is part of the job.
Still don't mind them riffling through your bank details?
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
And everyone was paranoid about Chinese stuff.
What a crock of #@it! We hold these lies to be self-evident, that all men are not created equal, that they are endowed by their greed with unlimited unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and kill the rest. Looks to me like those they are spying on everyone, anywhere, are the real traitors according to good old uncle Sam. They should pay or die. Simple as that!
Interesting thought, that we would have these rights if there was no Absolute Law or something similar. What would lead us to conclude that everyone has the right to Liberty, for example? Is it a matter of taking a vote about it? And if the majority vote against, could they then imprison the minority? I live in Europe and one thing I envy the US Constitution is the way rights are defined - that they are given by an Absolute and therefore cannot be voted away :)
I'm sorry, I the the danger is more "what happens when those with the data decide to use it for nefarious purposes?". The existance of such an enormous body of data will mean some people will misuse it. And they ALREADY have!
Creator can be a metaphore here. It doesn't need an agent for the passage to serve its purpose. There is speculation that some of the founding fathers were atheists despite much of the language that was used. The salient point is that we have rights from the moment we exist.
That's what we want to change. The biggest problem is that the enemy of the NSA is anyone that would oppose it, or tear it down. It will move to defend itself by using it's considerable power. It needs to be torn down and replaced with an entity with a more targeted mission and more oversight.
Where do you draw the line? I understand that it is illegal to intercept mail, but we are talking about foreign exports which are under tight scrutiny.
Famous quote by the head of us intelligence regarding spying on Kaiser et all
gentlemen do not read other gentlemen mail