Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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