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

#191

Post by seppin » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #71

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. Espe…

Metadata is data.

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

#192

Post by kimjongtrill » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 6:34 AM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #123

charlchi wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who visit this website are the people who are paid to create and administer all of this technology. Exactly, some falsely assume all technologists somehow share an enthusiasm for morality. Many of the most successful technologists I know simply work for the highest pay from military/intelligence contracts.

The term "hacker" in "hacker news" is too misleading, especially those of us who use the more RMS-esque definition of it. Petition to change to something more appropos.

Lol petition to stop naming anything because eventually all labels become bad. /s

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

#193

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #166

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.

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...

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by NorwegianDude » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

romanoderoma wrote: post #89

openssl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data collection and political system are VERY different. All governments collect data on their private citizens, but not all sell their organs for profit or do forced sterilization

As an European, does it really make a difference? Is USA really much better than China?

I think the US is much better at collecting data. The US has been proven to collect data and plant backdoors, China has not, despite how much the US states that eg. Huawei has backdoors in their 4G/5G equipment. So either China is much better when it comes to privacy online, or just way more competent as they manage to avoid getting caught.

They both suck in their own way, that's for sure.

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

#195

Post by hvidgaard » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

tokai wrote: post #130

mrweasel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Fat chance. Nasar Khader (conservative MP) is attacking TET (the body that observes danish intelligence orgs) on his twitter, and first whiff of any kind of top down investigation, launched Claus Hjort (former defence minister) in a series of attacks on the current minister…

Any politician that have had a part of this want it to stay in the dark. They know that it's explicitly forbidden in "Grundloven" (the constitution in Denmark), except if some law enables the authorities to do it. There has never been such a law allowing them to spy on all danish citizens, and if there was, we'd know about it.

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

#196

Post by upofadown » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #154

monocasa wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal has open clients with reproducible builds. We know that they are keeping their promises wrt what information is communicated with the backends. That's a step above the other options in common use, and in fact does make Signal special.

What's better, Signal or Telegram?

They are more or less the same thing if you are not trusting anyone. Both require you have to verify the key fingerprint for a particular contact (safety numbers) if you want effective end to end encryption. Both are silos. Telegram is better about distribution and can be gotten from places you might trust better (e.g. F-droid, Debian). Both have some sort of reproducible build thing going on. Both could get access to your connections to other users if they wanted where Signal also insists on access to everyone's phone number. Telegram works on desktop without also insisting you have the program running on your phone.

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

#197

Post by jmnicolas » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:50 AM UTC

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…

To reinforce your point:

> Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata'

https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-...

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

#198

Post by messo » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

ToFab123 wrote: post #186

> 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 yea…

This is really fascinating. I dug around a bit to see if I could find a digital copy of the article you mentioned. The Norwegian National Library have an impressive archive of scanned books and newspapers going back hundreds of years, but apparently no danish newspapers. Instead I found a reference to a book from 1996 by an author from New Zealand which seems to describe the same topic in great detail.

This is basically the very early, pre-internett version of what Snowden revealed. The book is made available for free by the author: http://www.nickyhager.info/Secret_Power.pdf

This old website also contains a lot of interesting information on Echelon: https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/echelon04.htm

The summary is quite something: «In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world.»

There was also made a documentary based on the book (?):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-S0JH5YYZw

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

#199

Post by redis_mlc » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #95

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…

The people who visit this website are the people who are paid to create and administer all of this technology. They're not only the last people you would be able to convince of something that would affect their livelihoods, but even the ones who do understand feel like it is part of their duty to deceive the less technically adept about the capabilities and dangers of the technology that they're surrounded with. The…

> They're not only the last people you would be able to convince of something that would affect their livelihoods

Working in Silicon Valley, I would not agree with saying that engineers in general are involved in this for any immoral reasons. (One of the few exceptions is ad tracking experts, who dig like pigs for truffles through PII.) The reasons are not knowing history (ie. Crypto AG pwnage), and just a lack of intellectual curiosity.

I'd like to comment on the importance of metadata analysis.

This is not well-known, but before the British were able to decrypt German WW2 traffic, they used very detailed radio traffic metadata analysis to map everything they needed to know about ground troops. (The architect of that was given US citizenship after the war and built the US' system, but on a global scale.)

Details of that were classified long after the war in both countries. And it was just metadata.

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

#200

Post by nelaboras » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 7:54 AM UTC

enkid wrote: post #19

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 looking for more oversight than is expressed in the article? It says the Danes check to make sure what the NSA searches for on that system does not include Danish citizen identifiers.

Part of the Snowden revelations was that the German BND was also granting this access. The NSA sent so many keywords that the BND basically stopped checking, and looking at it in an investigative committee of the german parliament they found a massive amount of clear domestic espiomlnage (keywords like 'Siemens' or product/technology names). Basically the BND was too incompetent to realise they were enabling US espionage on their own companies. Insane but true. You could and should blame the BND but honestly what kind of partner is the NSA if you can't even trust them on such basic level?

Even more surprising that DK hasn't been paying attention to any of that apparently...