51–60 of 192 posts
It's interesting to see this, and the reference to "one million emails", considering the prevalence of opportunistic TLS on MTA connections. Gmail reports 89% of their inbound and outbound flow is protected by TLS [1]. Wouldn't that eliminate the ability of the NSA to intercept those messages? [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've misread the map by assuming "Maryland" was a state label, when evidence within the same map clearly indicates it is not. "Northern California" and "Southern California" are not states. Instead, they are areas, and Washington D.C. is in the area of Maryland.
This is ridiculous, but I'll play along. California absolutely is a state. Further defining the location of a city in a state does not really explain how Washington DC ends up being classified as part of Maryland. Washington DC is not part of the state Maryland. There is also no area (I assume by "area" you mean metro area or region) that is commonly defined as Maryland. Washington DC is part of the DC metropolitan a…
It's intended to give the viewer a rough idea of where in the US that particular point is located without having to type out "District of Columbia" which is too long. A million maps on the Internet are more deserving of cartographic pedantry.
Wow, just made a crazy realization. A while back I was downtown with my 5yo kid, and we were by the bus stop right next to this building (You can actually see the bus stop in the picture). The bus was late, and my kid was hyper, and he tried going through the revolving doors. They were locked, no big deal. After a while, he tried going through the doors again. At this point, three security guards with ballistic vests…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is ridiculous, but I'll play along. California absolutely is a state. Further defining the location of a city in a state does not really explain how Washington DC ends up being classified as part of Maryland. Washington DC is not part of the state Maryland. There is also no area (I assume by "area" you mean metro area or region) that is commonly defined as Maryland. Washington DC is part of the DC metropolitan a…
Perhaps you shouldn't discount the entire content of the article based on what could be perceived as a minor mistake. There's quite a bit of corroborating material in regards to the core theme of the Intercept piece (AT&T/NSA collaboration); for example, the engineer who's quoted in the Intercept article has been speaking out about NSA surveillance for several years. He's been referenced in similar articles in variou…
To me, it seems like this article is sensationalizing a practice most were aware of already. I suppose it is mildly interesting to highlight a bunch of locations where it may be happening, but certainly not breaking news.
One wonders if a CDN might advertise, "we promise once your data enters our network at our edge locations outside of the US, it does not traverse any AT&T networks while reaching your server inside the US". Same with cloud companies' private networks across regions.
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.
Which sane people call Man in the Middle and should not be allowed at all. I have seen people doing this Flexiable SSL with Credit Card data and other PII believing it is "secure"
Cloudflare may have started out with security in mind but their new services centered around centralization of key services (dns) and this kind of security breaking product means IMO they are a net negative in the world of Information Security
Wow, just made a crazy realization. A while back I was downtown with my 5yo kid, and we were by the bus stop right next to this building (You can actually see the bus stop in the picture). The bus was late, and my kid was hyper, and he tried going through the revolving doors. They were locked, no big deal. After a while, he tried going through the doors again. At this point, three security guards with ballistic vests…
Like a lot of federal agencies, NSA has its own police force to secure their buildings. A few years ago they somewhat infamously shot someone who drove through the Fort Meade gate and then refused an order to stop. They were driving a stolen car, but apparently made a wrong turn.
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If your communication is encrypted it shouldn't matter if it passes AT&T networks. Either A. Popular and well known encryption algorithms are not broken by the NSA, and your communication is private. B. Popular and well known encryption algorithms are broken by the NSA, but the fact that it's broken is top secret and the state will not do any actions that revel the secret. Your communications are not safe, and while…
> If your communication is encrypted it shouldn't matter if it passes AT&T networks. IIRC, the signals intelligence agencies like the NSA learn almost as much from traffic analysis (e.g. who's talking to who and when) and metadata than from actual message content. Mere encryption itself often doesn't protect much from that.
I’d love to see the intercept publish the equivalent for China, Russia, etc. It feels the press has very overindexed into the NSA.
The US on the other attempts to play like the US Government is high and moral, respecting the freedoms of their citizens, while in the background they are just as Authoritarian as Russia and China
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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.
Wow, just made a crazy realization. A while back I was downtown with my 5yo kid, and we were by the bus stop right next to this building (You can actually see the bus stop in the picture). The bus was late, and my kid was hyper, and he tried going through the revolving doors. They were locked, no big deal. After a while, he tried going through the doors again. At this point, three security guards with ballistic vests…
The one in the picture? Is that NY? I don't recognize the skyline.