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Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

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Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#71

Post by godelski »

jtchang wrote: post #24

All these comments about metadata not being useful are missing the point. Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Knowing what sites a target visits, access patterns, changes in behavior: all this can be fed into ML algorithms to come up with fingerprints. You don't need to be able decrypt the data in transit if you know the endpoints and can somehow compromise the…

It honestly worries me that this is the top comment on hacker news. Not because it is wrong (it isn't) but because of all places that website filled with tech workers and experts in the full software stack, full of people that work on and exploit meta data, it still needs to be discussed how important metadata is.

If we can't convince people with their ear to the ground, how does one convince the general public. Especially since it isn't intuitive how metadata is useful. Though the analogy I typically use is a private investigator following you around. Can't hear your conversations, but can see everyone you talk to, where, and for how long.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#72

Post by cambinoda »

The NSA is harmless compared to social media and other privacy threats. Without tapped lines WWII wouldn’t have been won. Silicon Valley was founded with that budget. They aren’t 24/7 trying to change your spending habits like social media. And they aren’t stealing your company or reproducing your product at lower cost to make your inventory worthless. Is it concerning? Sure. But so is the speech enabled remote control (which you can drill btw) and phone you use that listen and watch.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#73

Post by mrweasel »

Havoc wrote: post #35

The fact that Danish intel has access to me just emphasizes how much of a free for all this is on that level. (nothing against the Danish - but think about what that implies about "trusted" relationships like five eyes)

Welcome to six years ago, where Americans where shocked that the NSA had spied on US citizens but did not give a shit about the spying on regular innocent people in other countries around the world.

As a Dane, I hope that the politicians a going to make it crystal clear the the FE is suppose to collect intel to protect the country, but not at any cost. Flat out lying and keeping secrets from the people who are tasked with the civilian oversight of the FE should be punished with prison time to make it clear, at all levels, that this will not be tolerated.

I don’t have much faith in any serious reprocaution though. At least two ministers of justice have told telcos to continue provide mass survilance to PET ( Internal police intelligence ). It’s clearly against EU law and EU courts have made rulings telling the Danish government to stop. They just don’t care. The police won’t even say how often it’s used. The general consensus seems to be basically NEVER, and it’s never the main intelligence source, still they refuse to stop.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#74

Post by Havoc »

goto11 wrote: post #53
Havoc wrote: post #35

The fact that Danish intel has access to me just emphasizes how much of a free for all this is on that level. (nothing against the Danish - but think about what that implies about "trusted" relationships like five eyes)

Danish intelligence have access to cables running through Denmark. This is what you should expect. This whole debacle is about Danish intelligence giving US intelligence access to the Danish cables - not the other way around!

>Danish intelligence have access to cables running through Denmark.

Access to cables and access to xkeyscore are fundamentally not the same thing

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#75

Post by Jon_Lowtek »

aliceryhl wrote: post #14
toopok4k3 wrote: post #7

I love how the politicians presume NSA is safe partner and their danish citizens are not in the data. It does not really help if every other neighbouring country does the same. NSA will get danish info elsewhere. Everyone gets played. It works as long as USA is an trusthworthy ally. They wouldn't dare to abuse the information for private gains... right?

Are you sure? I find it very convincing that NSA would not betray the trust, as it also says in the article. > "I can not at all imagine in my imagination that the NSA would betray that trust. I consider it completely and utterly unlikely. If the NSA had a desire to obtain information about Danish citizens or companies, the United States would simply turn to [the domestic security service] PET, which would then provi…

> (...) NSA would not betray the trust (...)

German BND did nothing to verify any selectors asked by the NSA and just ran them without any safeguards. During the investigation into those practices it turned out the NSA used that trust to run over forty thousand selectors that are in violation of german interests. From what can be cobbled together from media reports that includes german industry, german government, other european governments, the EU itself, multiple european defense industries, every single foreign embassy in Berlin, delegates to the UN, NGOs like Human Rights Watch, and multiple Universities, among others. More then two thirds of all targets were friendlies within EU or NATO.

We joke that "german secret service" is the service that tells the usa about german secrets.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#76

Post by StanislavPetrov »

waihtis wrote: post #16

This article is about 10x better in terms of explaining XKEYSCORE than the mess which is XKEYSCORE's Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore#Workings

Its almost like Wikipedia is largely run by an army of Philip Cross like people/agents whose goal is to manage the information that people see.

https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#78

Post by mkhpalm »

cblconfederate wrote: post #65
iconara wrote: post #34

It's very important that we keep Huawei out of our 5G networks! (what if they discovered things like this and told the citizens about it?)

As a european , i d rather have my surveillance camera phone china than the US. Google already knows too much about where and what i m doing, they dont need access to my camera. China OTOH doesnt have any kind of legal jurisdiction on me, we don't have some the kind of alliances that we share with US. Like during the cold war, arbitraging between spies was a safe bet.

What would you do if you were in a position of importance and China had some things you'd rather everybody not know? Don't be fooled that nothing can come of it just because the legal jurisdiction doesn't exist.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#79

Post by cblconfederate »

mkhpalm wrote: post #78
cblconfederate wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a european , i d rather have my surveillance camera phone china than the US. Google already knows too much about where and what i m doing, they dont need access to my camera. China OTOH doesnt have any kind of legal jurisdiction on me, we don't have some the kind of alliances that we share with US. Like during the cold war, arbitraging between spies was a safe bet.

What would you do if you were in a position of importance and China had some things you'd rather everybody not know? Don't be fooled that nothing can come of it just because the legal jurisdiction doesn't exist.

that can happen from both sides though. plus i m not in that position obviously

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#80

Post by castorp »

bayindirh wrote: post #58
iconara wrote: post #34

It's very important that we keep Huawei out of our 5G networks! (what if they discovered things like this and told the citizens about it?)

As a non-US citizen, how can I be sure that all non-Huawei equipment is free of back doors, data-exfiltration and forwarding capabilities excluding the lawful interception feature set?

Well, there was the case where the the NSA intercepted hardware shipments (I think it was Cisco HW) to install their backdoors.
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