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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

#171

Post by ghein »

rdiddly wrote: post #142
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…

And the building has "reinforced concrete foundations" ! Wow, sounds exotic! Just kidding... not sure if they mean something else, but "reinforced concrete foundations" might be the most commonplace thing in structural engineering. (Most foundations involve concrete, and most concrete is reinforced.) So this is a bit like saying your car has a paint job. But hey I used to be a structural engineer, and unfair ballbust…

The Intercept are voluntarily acting as an arm of the FSB.

Just think of them as Stalin's New York Times - willing accomplices to Soviet genocide.

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

#172

Post by bitexploder »

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…

Most traffic is HTTP/S. I would bet a decent amount of dollars the NSA can transparently MiTM any common CA certs. Look at what a mess the trusted roots are.

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

#173

Post by nickpsecurity »

peterwwillis wrote: post #35

This 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.

Prior leaks showed they were paying multiple telecoms huge amounts of money to do exactly that.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attver...

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

#174

Post by dmix »

ghein wrote: post #171
rdiddly wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the building has "reinforced concrete foundations" ! Wow, sounds exotic! Just kidding... not sure if they mean something else, but "reinforced concrete foundations" might be the most commonplace thing in structural engineering. (Most foundations involve concrete, and most concrete is reinforced.) So this is a bit like saying your car has a paint job. But hey I used to be a structural engineer, and unfair ballbust…

The Intercept are voluntarily acting as an arm of the FSB. Just think of them as Stalin's New York Times - willing accomplices to Soviet genocide.

Yes, journalism working hard to spread awareness of a massive global surveillance systems, with rubberstamp oversight, that threaten fundamental rights found in all western countries against dragnets and warrantless privacy invasion = must be the Russian boogiemen at work.

"Move along citizen"

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

#175

Post by XalvinX »

bonyt wrote: post #48

Not the first time: Room 641A: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

12 years later and nothing changed. The SCOTUS killed the lawsuit and Congress let everyone involved off the hook.

Since there are rarely, if ever, any consequences for breaking the law or the Constitution, why would they stop?

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

#176

Post by XalvinX »

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/...

Man is that bad art...almost like it was made by committee.

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

#177

Post by scoggs »

tmm wrote: post #155
foobar1962 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they colour-code the wires to identify them? "Ah there's your problem: you've patched the Fire Engine Red pair, it's meant to be the Ferrari Red. Rookie error."

> How do they colour-code the wires to identify them? It’s actually pretty simple. There are only 10 colors: blue, orange, green, brown, slate, white, red, black, yellow, and violet. They’re grouped in “binders” (using colored strings). You’re likely familiar with the first four pairs from network cables (which omit the white/slate pair). After cylcling through blue through slate paired with white through violet (25…

What about if you are color blind? Change professions?

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

#178

Post by jessaustin »

ghein wrote: post #171
rdiddly wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the building has "reinforced concrete foundations" ! Wow, sounds exotic! Just kidding... not sure if they mean something else, but "reinforced concrete foundations" might be the most commonplace thing in structural engineering. (Most foundations involve concrete, and most concrete is reinforced.) So this is a bit like saying your car has a paint job. But hey I used to be a structural engineer, and unfair ballbust…

The Intercept are voluntarily acting as an arm of the FSB. Just think of them as Stalin's New York Times - willing accomplices to Soviet genocide.

"Soviet genocide"? There are numerous problems with that concept, besides the obvious fact that USSR ceased to exist decades ago. Where is the genocide occurring? Is it Libya? Iraq? Yemen? Somalia? Niger?

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

#179

Post by fulafel »

kodablah wrote: post #113
lev99 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That assumes metadata is irrelevant. The destination, time of day, and volume of the traffic all have value separately and especially so when together. The destination can be masked if you control both sides and AT&T is a go between, but timing issues are subject to analysis unless you are a large enough player to give safety in numb…

Hear, hear. The stream of encrypted packets that makes up someone's web browsing traffic is a very telling one and transactions of various web apps have telling signatures, which can be then correlated with eg social media updates or other signals that ripple to the target's contacts.

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

#180

Post by walrus01 »

scoggs wrote: post #177
tmm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they colour-code the wires to identify them? It’s actually pretty simple. There are only 10 colors: blue, orange, green, brown, slate, white, red, black, yellow, and violet. They’re grouped in “binders” (using colored strings). You’re likely familiar with the first four pairs from network cables (which omit the white/slate pair). After cylcling through blue through slate paired with white through violet (25…

What about if you are color blind? Change professions?

Yes. Same problem for fiber fusion splicers. Worked for an ISP that hired a color blind person as a field tech, he didn't last long.
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