I’d love to see the intercept publish the equivalent for China, Russia, etc. It feels the press has very overindexed into the NSA.
Nice whataboutism. While I agree China/Russia has the intent, but do they have the ability to conduct wiretapping on this scale? It sounds like the US is uniquely able to do this since so much of the internet's backbones/services reside here.
The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
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Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't the NSA start working with other ISPs than AT&T? I'd really like to see CDNs like CloudFlare start requiring Cloud Origin encryption; e.g. what CloudFlare calls "Full SSL" -- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170416-W... . Right now, you can do TLS termination ("Flexible SSL"), which end-users aren't aware of -- they see a padlock -- and I'm sure the NSA doesn't mind.
>Couldn't the NSA start working with other ISPs than AT&T? They do. They work with all of them. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-a... AT&T just happens to have the oldest relationships and the largest infrastructure.
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Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#33I'm struggling to find the new information here. We've known for years through the New York Times and others that AT&T helps the NSA. We've known for close to a hundred years about AT&T Long Lines networks and hubs for that network. It's only basic logic to put the two together and know that the NSA uses AT&T's hubs. What's new here?
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Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#34I'm struggling to find the new information here. We've known for years through the New York Times and others that AT&T helps the NSA. We've known for close to a hundred years about AT&T Long Lines networks and hubs for that network. It's only basic logic to put the two together and know that the NSA uses AT&T's hubs. What's new here?
Did you even read the article? The new information is that these specific 8 buildings are specifically noted within NSA documents as the 8 locations within AT&T's network that the NSA utilizes.
I don't know what The Intercept expects anyone to do with that information, but that is new information.
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#35This is focused on AT&T, but there are other major datacenters in the US that are also major transit peers for foreign nations, with entire floors dedicated to government equipment. AT&T is a convenient one-stop shop, but they will probably need to use other service providers as well.
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#36It could just be part of regular routing, but I noticed for example that all my facebook traffic is routed to an address with an LA prefix in LA. That doesn't seem strange except that Facebook doesn't have an LA datacenter (at least not that I could find any public record of, and they seem to publish the location of other data centers).
There's a difference between a data center and a POP. The former is very large. The latter is usually a rack or more in someone else's facilities. When you try to reach Google or Facebook, you rarely hit their data centers directly. They're out in the boonies, where land and power are cheap. Rather, you talk to their proxies at the edge (POPs, often in large cities). From there, your data is either returned immediate…
Makes sense, thanks!
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you tried in China or Russia you'd probably get a nice visit to a permanent-stay "resort" with "daily exercise" where you get to work in fields without pay
you're really optimistic... why would PRC provide a stable "work" and "exercise" routine when it can simply use a death-van? PRC is wiser to do a quick off-with-their-heads when it wants to shush someone
True, a .22 round is much more efficient then lodging and food
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice whataboutism. While I agree China/Russia has the intent, but do they have the ability to conduct wiretapping on this scale? It sounds like the US is uniquely able to do this since so much of the internet's backbones/services reside here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM
Thanks for the link. Doesn't seem to address my contention that the US has unique levels of access. I assume that all countries spy on their own citizens, but NSA is uniquely positioned to get traffic at a global scale.
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#39I'm struggling to find the new information here. We've known for years through the New York Times and others that AT&T helps the NSA. We've known for close to a hundred years about AT&T Long Lines networks and hubs for that network. It's only basic logic to put the two together and know that the NSA uses AT&T's hubs. What's new here?
Did you even read the article? The new information is that these specific 8 buildings are specifically noted within NSA documents as the 8 locations within AT&T's network that the NSA utilizes. I don't know what The Intercept expects anyone to do with that information, but that is new information.
To OP's point this isn't some shocking revelation. Do people think that this is the full picture? That were even close to having any sort of understanding of what really happens?
To your point however this tidbit does give a good excuse to re raise the issue. Why are we allowed to spy on ourselves?
Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
#40I'm struggling to find the new information here. We've known for years through the New York Times and others that AT&T helps the NSA. We've known for close to a hundred years about AT&T Long Lines networks and hubs for that network. It's only basic logic to put the two together and know that the NSA uses AT&T's hubs. What's new here?
Did you even read the article? The new information is that these specific 8 buildings are specifically noted within NSA documents as the 8 locations within AT&T's network that the NSA utilizes. I don't know what The Intercept expects anyone to do with that information, but that is new information.
I admit, I didn't read the full article because it's only barely readable on my device, but if my scroll bar is accurate, I did read about 70% of it.
But my point stands.
We've known that these specific buildings are the key hubs in the network for close to a century. And that they're hardened against nuclear attack, etc...
Maybe I was too deep into the phreaking scene in the early days, but I thought this was common knowledge in technology circles.