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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.
Leave it to the NSA to co-opt a QoS term for what is, in essence, an MitM technique
Diverting traffic is not illegal. Recording the diverted traffic is not illegal. So nothing they've done, or asked anyone to do, was in fact illegal. This is apples and oranges compared to the hit man analogy.
So giving someone a free vacation to country X is legal. Let's say that in country X there is a way to kill someone that is legal. I would suspect that if you arranged both of these things for someone with the intent of killing them, you could easily be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
They absolutely are still breaking the law. Unfortunately, prosecutors break their necks looking the other way and judjes break their backs from bending backwards. Blackmail may be involved.
How can the government divert traffic with the intent of bypassing the law, and somehow this is legal because of the method they used to do it? Are they not also conspiring to break the law?
The same way tax avoidance is legal: the intent is to bypass as much taxation as possible not by breaking the law but by abusing legal loopholes instead.
Have you honestly never stopped to think that maybe, quite possibly, you've just been seriously ill-informed?
I'm sure you haven't. Keep on keeping on then, my liberal friend.
There was no coup. There was a Presidential election. What role did the NSA, FBI or other American secret police play in this election? Clearly the FBI had a role that was not wise. The secret police should not have a role in fixing domestic political disputes.
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.
That and they have guns, lots of guns. THAT is how you do this and it's how citizens are forced to pay taxes.... you dont, the guys with guns will come and take you away to pay for daring to go against what they want.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So maybe it isn't your ISP's fault that your internet speed is so slow. It's the NSA that is adding all those extra hops over potentially congested links. :-)
This needs to be pointed out to more people, especially MMO gamers.
They'd be fine and likely not even notice if the government set up armed checkpoints and suspended civil rights, but screw with a gamer's lag & packet-loss/jitter, and you'll have an army of gamer-rage berserkers trailing Dorito crumbs headed to Washington, D.C. to burn it down!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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?
Traffic shaping is directly against net-neutrality. I can't find the original release of the FCC net-neutrality, but I've read it. At this time traffic shaping can only be done by EDGE servers. EDGE servers can be see on the graphs of robtex.com and inputed IP addresses.
Go ask each of your neighbors if they've ever heard of it. Ask you coworkers. Ask your family members. "Publicly readable" does not translate to "well-known."
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Moreover can we please stop confusing legal and illegal with what we know is clearly morally right or wrong.
They are deliberately going against the intention of the law. The legislators who draw up the laws (ie write the words) do so assuming that a public body like the NSA is not going to dodge the intention/spirit by using small loop holes. Whoever in the NSA authorised this should be held personally accountable: sacked and have their NSA pension withheld.
and the coup happened when the voter rolls leaked. There's mounting evidence (including an article from the WSJ, not exactly a WaPo style liberal rag) that those leaked voter rolls were shared with the Republicans and would have played a crucial roll in their victory.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Curious re-use of something we saw several years ago -- showing yet again, there's (almost) nothing new under the sun. From a previous write-up I did: .gov and .mil sites, Senate, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, DoD, NASA, and US Commerce Dept; also websites for Dell, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM, and specific Australian and Japanese sites. Analysts indicate target selection appears to be intentional & carefully-planned even if activation may have been mistaken or ill-timed. Access to SSL certificates from the China Internet Information Center (an arm of the China’s Ministry of Info & Industry) would mean all SSL traffic was exposed. While the Chinese government insists the latter incident resulted from IPV6 migration errors, the incidents demonstrate intercept and blocking capability that affect critical infrastructure.
For several days in in March 2010, erroneous or malicious router messages originating from state-owned China Telecom instructed Internet carriers that their connections were the fastest available worldwide. Automated acceptance of these instructions caused portions of traffic to be diverted through CT networks, effectively subjecting some U.S. Internet users to Chinese government proxy filters. On April 8, 2010, the same type of messages rerouted a large portion of the world's Internet traffic (all traffic on 15% of network routes) through CT networks for ~18 minutes, including all US
Curious that CN state actors did this to pull traffic in for technical access, while the US state actors appears to use the same to push for legal access. Immoral yes, but simple and slick.
I think not...(*poof*)
What you're referring to as a "coup" another person might refer to as a "wake-up call". While I'm sure the founding fathers did not foresee Twitter in its precise present form, it's far too soon to consign their prescient safeguards to the water under the bilge.
Second, our surveillance powers detected the threat before the election took place, and the Obama administration warned Russia in direct language to lay off on the worst of their meddling or face serious consequences from an American counter hack (picture the clone-army Mossad, with corresponding resources). Obama probably should have done more, but the optics were complicated (thanks for furnishing Exhibit A), so he dithered despicably.
Third, Trump would have earned 90% of the same votes with no Russian meddling at all.
So American now has a president that only 45% of the population would have voted for in a perfectly dry, vodka-free election, giving the Koch brothers their last, Act III simultaneous erection (hate to disappoint you, but don't count on erection 2021, boys, you've totally shot your loads).
Based on the caliber of your post, let's have a car metaphor.
The founding fathers were not building a democratic Ferrari. They were building a democratic Land Cruiser. The ugly kind that's surprisingly hard to kill.
Short of a roll-over at high speed somewhere along Armageddon ridge, it's probably going to outlive America's latest and greatest asshole taking his turn at the urn behind the wheel.
Any government willing to spy on other countries would have even more incentive to do it on their own, ought that to happen as well then? You must be thrilled
Oh, you mean all those detaila about the DNC's collusion with hillary, not to mention numerous media outlets? Or hillary's cushy corporate ties and eager fundraising practices? You know, all the things that the dnc and hillary never denied were true. So to you, the truth is disinformation?
There are only American government and corporate trolls on slashdot. Russia doesn't care about our tech forums, corporate trolling on the other hand has been here for years. No one who brings up so-called russian trolls has any idea about paid trolling--it's been in their face for years and they still can't recognize it.
The change was Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Before that everything was fair game if some "international" color of law connection could be made.
FISA put collect it all into US law. Staff could be told it was always legal to collect it all on international calls and networks.
Peering cost could be arranged so that everyone domestically had 4 hops of friends of friends of friends who did some networking out side the USA.
Thats a legal collection to an interesting person back into the USA. Why is a domestic call or a domestic connection from the East coast of the USA to the West coast "cheaper" if it connects out into Canada, Ireland or the somewhere in the Caribbean or South America on the way?
Because international peering costs into and out of the USA are more profitable than trying to get two established, greedy domestic US telcos connected?
Collect it all and add that profit connecting international peering to make it all legal.
Want to collect on a US domestic call?
All that collect it all network has to see is that the call came in from some Canada or Ireland network. Or the call went out Canada or Ireland on the way back into the USA.
Legal cover to collect on both sides of that domestic call as they have used "international" networks or a friend of a friend of a friend did last decade.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Or maybe you're delusional and you're entire argument is a fantasy. And that's why there's no proof, no evidence, nothing but anonymous sources and conspiracy nuts.
Well assuming the offshore location is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... a place where, neither the Australia government (they just guard the perimeter) nor the US government, to far and they see nothing. They apparently used to shift through very large numbers of hard disk drives before but you could expect some dedicated cables by now. A place where a lot of naughty stuff very likely happens and there was a major expansion there not that long back. Whilst both the US and Australian government studiously pretend it doesn't exist by not mentioning it any more, many deep state shenanigans and controls in place.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So MiTM attacks, performed by random ordinary people is perfectly fine and legal to do, when done with the purpose to record and sift through their data transmissions? Somehow, I find that hard to believe...
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.
People feel utterly powerless to do something about being enslaved by a banking cartel, so they choose to take solace in the fact that they can still say "fuck" on the Internet. A mugger they still have a chance of defending themselves against.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)