Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #177

strictnein wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> upper middle-class are the most conservative elements of any society This very clearly is not the case in the US.

I think that conservative means "in support of a (certain kind of) status quo" in this case, rather than the American line-up of hot-button culture war issues. The upper middle-class wants stability, whatever it is, because of the structure of their income stream. That's why upper middle class people are basically centrists and don't want to rock the boat too much: they're doing very well in the boat, and rocking it…

Why do these points not apply to the upper class? I would expect them to be at least as conservative as the upper middle class, and all of these arguments fail to distinguish the groups. But the claim is that the upper-middle class is more conservative than the upper class. That's... weird?

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

#182

Post by eitland » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

danhor wrote: post #159

gaius_baltar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the AFAIK (I do not use WhatsApp), it's Google backup services on Android. WhatsApp stores the local chat history unencrypted in the device and does not mark it as "do not backup", so the cloud sync service uploads it to the backup service. And Android does not encrypt this information. For contrast, Signal does encrypt the local history and the backups (to the point that is a bit harder to backup the chat…

Additionally, WhatsApp heavily encourages storing backups in Google Drive as well, with semi-regular popups asking users to configure backups in GDrive and to set the backup interval, if not already done. Obviously this doesn't mean Facebook has the information and the straightforward interpretation is that it's the least involved way of creating backups without sending it all to facebook

Agree.

My point is mostly aimed at people claiming WhatsApp is somehow very safe just because of the end-to-end encryption.

I'm saying end-to-end encryption is a really great idea and everyone should do that and still encouraging people to look beyond that and think about the entire threat model when deciding what is important for them.

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

#183

Post by counterpoint1 » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #176

AlexandrB wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? It's absolutely true in the US > But among the 64% of American voters who earn more than $50,000 a year, 49% chose Trump, and 47% Clinton. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/white-voters...

And both Clinton and Biden are very conservative candidates, by any reasonable standard.

God I wish this trope would die.

All the political terms - left, right, conservative, progressive, liberal, etc have definitions which vary greatly from country-to-country, over time, and by which group is using them. Clinton and Biden are representatives from American's dominant liberal party and represent views which are left-of-center when you do the sane thing and define center as "median voter in the country being discussed" and not "my group of friends" or whatever time or place you're imagining.

You might as well say 'Bill Gates is very poor, by any reasonable standard' (because unlike the rich people of 2,000 years ago, he can't raise an army that rivals that of his home nation-state or the rich of the future who take vacations on the moon).

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

#184

Post by KMag » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #171

KMag wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the general sentiment, but Trump is a very poor yardstick for conservative political beliefs. Out of Reagan, both Bushes, McCain, Romney, and Trump, Trump is the clear outlier.

You're right that Trump is not necessarily representative of other Republicans. But I think the skew is actually the opposite direction of what you're saying. I think Trump is actually less likely to be favored by wealthy people vs say Bush. Look at this polling of support of Bush vs Kerry by income level[1], as income rises support for Bush almost always rises, and support for Kerry almost always decreases. [1] http…

I didn't mean to suggest anything about the directionality of the skew, just to mention he's not a classical conservative and there's likely some skew between supporting Trump and having conservative political leanings.

(On a side note, there's some smaller skew between voting Republican and having conservative political leanings. I'm conservative in fiscal policy, foreign policy, and favoring action at a local and state level, but liberal regarding most social policies, criminal justice reform, and environmental regulation. I think government enforced price transparency plus a German-style universal healthcare system via private insurance decoupled from employment is preferable to either a US model or a Canadian/UK-style single payer system. I've always registered as a Democrat.)

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

#185

Post by Spivak » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

counterpoint1 wrote: post #183

pessimizer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And both Clinton and Biden are very conservative candidates, by any reasonable standard.

God I wish this trope would die. All the political terms - left, right, conservative, progressive, liberal, etc have definitions which vary greatly from country-to-country, over time, and by which group is using them. Clinton and Biden are representatives from American's dominant liberal party and represent views which are left-of-center when you do the sane thing and define center as "median voter in the country bei…

I think the parent means that both Clinton and Biden are establishment candidates. Neither of the are boat rockers like Bernie or Trump in 2016. I think the reality of Trump’s presidency is far more establishment than his original campaign but still.

Liberal & Conservative in the US usually have to do with what changes a person wants to make but Clinton, Romney, Obama, Biden, hell Bush are all literally conservative in the scope and amount.

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

#186

Post by ToFab123 » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

> In the mid-1990s, the NSA had found out that somewhere under Copenhagen there was a backbone cable containing phone calls, e-mails and text messages from and to countries like China and Russia, which was of great interest for the Americans. Tapping that cable, however, was almost impossible without the help of the Danes, so the NSA asked the FE for access to the cable.

This was revealed in details about 20 - 30 years ago in the Danish publication "Månedsbladet Press". I remember they had an insert, looked like a small newspaper, containing all the details about this. I remember this because this was the first time I heard the term "echelon". I my memory serves me correct I think that insert in the magazine was the first story or source of Echelon operating outside of the US so there is some kind of historical significance to this story.

If I recall correctly they did this wiretapping in a underground bunker in the middle of Copenhagen. The bunker had no toilet and they got spotted by the journalists that wonder why more people was coming out of that bunker everyday to go the bathroom than people going in. Something like that.

I don't have the magazine anymore but I know that the main library in Copenhagen has a copy as I checked several years later.

If any historians around here want the backstory behind all this you should contact the library and get a copy of that publication. The publication stopped long ago, but that was the only newspaper-like insert they every had so it should be easy to locate in the archives.

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

#187

Post by friendlybus » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

endgame wrote: post #179

godelski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Espe…

In the lead-up to Australia's metadata retention legislation, some org posted the following examples. I found them reasonably effective at convincing normal people, but we failed to convince the decision-makers in Parliament: - "What if your call logs indicated a 45-minute call to a suicide hotline made from a bridge. Do they need to hear exactly what was said?" - "What if your call logs showed you receiving a call f…

I think the lynchpin is not knowing. We don't know what all the data is used for or why it's taken. As long as we don't know we lack the ability to judge. We don't have the power to make a strong rhetorical argument without shared knowledge.

Colbert's white house correspondent's address covered it. Politicians don't talk about super depressing stuff like guantonomo bay and journalists have the courtesy to not try and find out.. We don't talk about data collection in any serious manner.

I think the weakness of data collection is when it gets in the average joe's way and it hasn't done that yet in a big way. The more we hammer home that it must facilitate movement through life and not hinder it, the better the middle ground will be.. maybe.

There is a requirement that both sides get really good at eviscerating lies and liars. Neither side of the fence wants fake data or betrayal.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

nyolfen wrote: post #178

zo1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to enlighten us what some of the "dangers" of metadata are?

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-nsas-secret-tool-for-... > Even by that account, the scale of collection brought to mind an evocative phrase from legal scholar Paul Ohm. Any information in sufficient volume, he wrote, amounted to a “database of ruin.” It held personal secrets that “if revealed, would cause more than embarrassment or shame; it would lead to serious, concrete, devastating harm.” Nearly anyone in…

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by Proziam » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #172

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your behavior is characteristic of a terrorist/pedophile/drug dealer. An automated computer system/bureaucracy, the workings of which are too complex for a human to intuit or critique, decides on the basis of this "fingerprint" that you should be dealt with. You are bombed by a drone / disparaged in authoritative media / shot by police along with your kids and dogs / have your possessions taken by force / have your l…

That seems more than just the dangers of metadata. That's more of the dangers of giving machines the authority to drop bombs with no human oversight at all. That same kind of problem could happen if the government wasn't spying on anything, or if the government was spying on content, not just metadata.

Humans follow orders which are given by humans on the basis of data which is analyzed by machines and interpreted by humans.

If the machine says "dude is terrorist based on XYZ" and the human cannot realistically verify all of that is factually correct (perhaps the subject's phone was lost as the subject walked by a mosque?), then it is much easier for the human to say "Data says this dude is terrorist" than it is to say "Data says this dude is terrorist, but the data is probably wrong and we shouldn't..."

The existence of the data itself is a threat against every subject the data includes, at a minimum.

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

#190

Post by waihtis » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #99

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

If all we have to go off of is the slides and rumors, it's still not super clear exactly how it works. Even for HN users, which are largely engineers, it can be confusing. If you're a wikipedia editor, probably more so.

Agreed, though the big thing missing from the Wikipedia article is the root data collection method - cable tapping - which makes all the difference in explaining an ubiquitous surveillance system.