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NSA 'Traffic Shaping' Can Divert US Internet Traffic For Easier Monitoring (zdnet.com)
schwit1 shares an article from ZDNet:
A new analysis of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden details a highly classified technique that allows the National Security Agency to "deliberately divert" U.S. internet traffic, normally safeguarded by constitutional protections, overseas in order to conduct unrestrained data collection on Americans. According to the new analysis, the NSA has clandestine means of "diverting portions of the river of internet traffic that travels on global communications cables," which allows it to bypass protections put into place by Congress to prevent domestic surveillance on Americans.
The new findings follow a 2014 paper by researchers Axel Arnbak and Sharon Goldberg, published on sister-site CBS News, which theorized that the NSA, whose job it is to produce intelligence from overseas targets, was using a "traffic shaping" technique to route US internet data overseas so that it could be incidentally collected under the authority of a largely unknown executive order... The research cites several ways the NSA is actively exploiting methods to shape and reroute internet traffic -- many of which are well-known in security and networking circles -- such as hacking into routers or using the simpler, less legally demanding option of forcing major network providers or telecoms firms into cooperating and diverting traffic to a convenient location.
The new findings follow a 2014 paper by researchers Axel Arnbak and Sharon Goldberg, published on sister-site CBS News, which theorized that the NSA, whose job it is to produce intelligence from overseas targets, was using a "traffic shaping" technique to route US internet data overseas so that it could be incidentally collected under the authority of a largely unknown executive order... The research cites several ways the NSA is actively exploiting methods to shape and reroute internet traffic -- many of which are well-known in security and networking circles -- such as hacking into routers or using the simpler, less legally demanding option of forcing major network providers or telecoms firms into cooperating and diverting traffic to a convenient location.
The US was subject to a coup d'etat in 2016, in which a hostile foreign power engaged in a massive fraud and disinformation campaign, largely using the internet, to install a sympathetic and incompetent man as president.
The NSA claims that surveillance powers are necessary to protect the country from hostile foreign actors who wish it harm -- but they have these powers and nonetheless didn't manage to protect the US from said coup. So, if these surveillance powers are precisely to stop information-warfare skulduggery, but they don't work, maybe they aren't worth the privacy tradeoffs?
The coup d'etat happened when the European bankers finally (after much effort and repeated tries) managed to establish their privately owned Federal Reserve banking system which took control of the nation's wealth. Think about it. Two US presidents were shot in the head in public: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. What did these two men have in common? They threatened the banking system by issuing interest-free currency through the Treasury Department like the Constitution specifies. Lincoln did it with his Greenbacks and Kennedy did it with Executive Order 11110. Both threatened the privately held central bank.
People really amaze me sometimes. If you tell someone that a street thug might shoot him dead in order to steal the cash in his wallet, he will believe you. If you say that powerful interests will kill to preserve empires worth billions or trillions of dollars, you're just nuts. Figure that one out.