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The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

theintercept.com

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Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#101

Post by oldgeezr »

puzzle wrote: post #20
bonestamp2 wrote: post #18

It 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…

Just curious, is there a good site/book/etc to learn how the modern internet actually works? As a lowly programmer, I have a good understanding of network communications, and some knowledge of things like routing protocols, but I'm completely lost when it comes to understanding how the modern internet actually functions. Thanks!

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#103

Post by closeparen »

stephengillie wrote: post #84

The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the building itself has a street-level office with signs for both AT&T and CenturyLink. 3rd Ave itself is slightly notorious - hosting the surface entrances for the Seattle bus tunnel, and a large number of inter-city routes, the area has a reputation for crime and t…

It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#104

Post by [deleted] »

lev99 wrote: post #42
kodablah wrote: post #6

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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#105

Post by stephengillie »

closeparen wrote: post #103
stephengillie wrote: post #84

The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the building itself has a street-level office with signs for both AT&T and CenturyLink. 3rd Ave itself is slightly notorious - hosting the surface entrances for the Seattle bus tunnel, and a large number of inter-city routes, the area has a reputation for crime and t…

It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?

3rd Ave wouldn't be my first choice to locate a new ISP store, or any new retail location. 4th or 5th would be better. Going up the hill to somewhere like Boren and Madison might be easier for people across the city to reach.

The historic reasons from other posters give good justification for the current location.

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#107

Post by always_good »

jakenberg wrote: post #106

There's an interesting 1960's era art installation by Anthony Heinsbergen on a side wall of the LA facility that seems oddly related to this... https://i1.wp.com/upinthevalley.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/...

I don't understand "oddly" here. The art piece seems rather literal rather than some odd coincidental association.

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#108

Post by judge2020 »

coldtea wrote: post #23
kodablah wrote: post #6

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.

> One wonders if a CDN might advertise, Yes, but they could also be lying about it.

Wouldn't it be easy to traceroute between the CDN and your server, or the CDN and your house to see if it hits servers that WHOIS to at&t?

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#109

Post by walrus01 »

closeparen wrote: post #103
stephengillie wrote: post #84

The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the building itself has a street-level office with signs for both AT&T and CenturyLink. 3rd Ave itself is slightly notorious - hosting the surface entrances for the Seattle bus tunnel, and a large number of inter-city routes, the area has a reputation for crime and t…

It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?

Every major north american city has a legacy telco central office in downtown, in a very central location, from the days of pulse-dial and then DTMF dial analog phones. Always owned by whatever corporate entity the Bell System and then ILEC eventually became.

Seattle, for example, also has the Elliot CO in Belltown: http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/

Re: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

#110

Post by schoen »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that metadata is more important than content Isn't metadata, practically speaking, a subset of content? (If you have the latter, you almost certainly also have the former?) Metadata is more useful than content if you're capacity constrained, technologically or legally, in collection and/or analysis.

Isn't metadata, practically speaking, a subset of content? Importantly to how we think about communication, no. Metadata is the signature that accompanies or encapsulates content, viewable to the world. You can completely conceal content, through encryption for example, but you can't completely conceal metadata. In other words there must be a physical exchange of energy somewhere (communication), and metadata tells y…

> you can't completely conceal metadata

You can do it with a very high cost (in overhead, latency, and availability) by having a large number of people all send and receive messages, on a fixed or randomized schedule, exceeding their maximum possible amount of communication with one another. Then someone monitoring the network knows that each of the participants in this system could have communicated with any other participant, but not whether or not the communication took place.

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