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White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

theweek.co.uk

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Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#51

Post by leoc »

krapp wrote: post #42
wavefunction wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to come out eventually, why not control the leak? PR 101, mang

But they're not controlling anything, they're just doing now what they would be doing if the leak had been real, assuming it was orchestrated. They would've done a better job letting everyone stay distracted by all the other crap being dropped on Obama's head right now.

Not necessarily: you could for example throw in red herrings and disinformation along with whatever facts you're disclosing. The "limited hangout" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout is apparently a real thing, though of course once you've heard of them it's easy to start imagining them where they don't exist.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#52

Post by jcampbell1 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
jcampbell1 wrote: post #10

The presentation makes it seem they are harvesting the data. That would resolve any apparent contradiction. The biggest question is how? Surely google has noticed these man in the middle attacks. I think the guardian misinterpreted the word "provider". Edit: it appears the NSA has google's ssl keys. That would explain all the talk about "direct access".

Google could not provide the NSA with its TLS keys and then argue it hadn't given the government direct access to its servers. Nor could the government MITM TLS, which would be detectable, nor could they have compromised a TLS CA to accomplish the same thing, because Google's keys are pinned in Chrome and recent Firefox; you can examine the builds to see that.

How do you resolve the the fact the presentation is real, and Larry Page's statements?

This is the only explanation that makes sense. Some secret court compels Google to provide their TLS keys, which is a a few kb of data. No one at Google has to know, and no one at Google can accidentally detect the leak.

Also, can you clarify for me why you think giving someone access to eavesdrop overlaps with "direct access to servers"?

If what I say is correct, Larry Page's statement is 100% defensible.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#53

Post by lawnchair_larry »

winslow wrote: post #3

"EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this story was published, The Guardian has reported that the UK intelligence gathering organisation GCHQ has had access to the PRISM system since at least June 2010 and has generated 197 intelligence reports." So other governments have a backdoor to our government's backdoor... What stops China among others from being able to access this? On the other hand, what is the truth if Larry Page is say…

> So other governments have a backdoor to our government's backdoor... What stops China among others from being able to access this?

Nothing, and that's exactly what China was doing during Aurora and similar operations.

It's worth noting that Google posted incorrect/misleading information on their blog at the time of that incident as well. They claimed that the intrusions were motivated by China wanting to target human rights and freedom of speech activists, positioning them as a villain.[1] It ended with the same crap about pushing for freedom and transparency.

A few months ago it was leaked that the actual motivations behind Aurora were that China was using it to see which of China's spies were being monitored by the US government through the PRISM-like interface[2]:

""What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on," Aucsmith says. "So if you think about this, this is brilliant counter-intelligence. You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that's difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way."

[3]:

"As Google was responding to the breach, its technicians made another startling discovery: its database with years of information on surveillance orders had been hacked. ...

The most sensitive orders, however, came from a federal court that approves surveillance of foreign targets such as spies, diplomats, suspected terrorists and agents of other governments. Those orders, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are classified.

Google did not disclose that breach publicly, but soon after detecting it, the company alerted the FBI, former officials said."

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...

[2] www.cio.com/article/732122/_Aurora_Cyber_Attackers_Were_Really_Running_Counter_Intelligence

[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chines...

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#54

Post by fragsworth »

Eric Schmidt, in March 2010, knew about this when he said the following for users who wished their actions to be private:

> But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we're all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#55

Post by stusmall »

maresca wrote: post #50

If it's going over the wire, you can bet they have access to it, with or without 'access.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Facebook is opt-in https and I believe google is https by default. I don't know about the other services.

Without their keys having it over the wire won't get them what they want.

EDIT: poor wording.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#56

Post by fragsworth »

> “It [PRISM] cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States,” said James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

And how are we supposed to believe this? We were already blatantly lied to.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#57

Post by foobarqux »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #52
tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google could not provide the NSA with its TLS keys and then argue it hadn't given the government direct access to its servers. Nor could the government MITM TLS, which would be detectable, nor could they have compromised a TLS CA to accomplish the same thing, because Google's keys are pinned in Chrome and recent Firefox; you can examine the builds to see that.

How do you resolve the the fact the presentation is real, and Larry Page's statements? This is the only explanation that makes sense. Some secret court compels Google to provide their TLS keys, which is a a few kb of data. No one at Google has to know, and no one at Google can accidentally detect the leak. Also, can you clarify for me why you think giving someone access to eavesdrop overlaps with "direct access to se…

Could it be that the presentation describes targeted surveillance? PRISM may just be a program to standardize a process and the type and format of information returned.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#58

Post by maresca »

stusmall wrote: post #55
maresca wrote: post #50

If it's going over the wire, you can bet they have access to it, with or without 'access.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Facebook is opt-in https and I believe google is https by default. I don't know about the other services. Without their keys having it over the wire won't get them what they want. EDIT: poor wording.

I don't think it's a stretch to think the government has the ssl keys. Or the ability to find the ssl keys.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#59

Post by DannyBee »

ig1 wrote: post #32
lawdawg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they didn't say that, everyone on HN would be whining about why they didn't deny "direct access" when that was the headline accusation. Can't win with you guys.

It's not the phrase "direct access" (which they could reasonably use given it was used in the original leak story), but rather the construction of the whole sentence. There are millions of ways you could phrase the response (Dropbox and Microsoft used completely different language), the chance that these five came up with the phrasing used independently seems fairly low. Especially as the statements weren't all given…

There are millions of ways to deny things.

This is the most clear and direct way

I accused you of doing X

You could say "you know, my brother and I, we once, 30 years ago blah blah blah blah blah blah but X, X never happened".

Most people, however, will just say "No, i don't do X".

They were accused, point blank, of providing direct access to their servers. They said "we do not provide direct access to their servers".

But please, see a conspiracy here because people are trying to be as direct and clear.

Re: White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google

#60

Post by brown9-2 »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #10

The presentation makes it seem they are harvesting the data. That would resolve any apparent contradiction. The biggest question is how? Surely google has noticed these man in the middle attacks. I think the guardian misinterpreted the word "provider". Edit: it appears the NSA has google's ssl keys. That would explain all the talk about "direct access".

Why would the government choose to use this route to get data from Google/Facebook/etc?

This would require them to have to know, and be kept up-to-date, with how every one of their applications sends data across the wire.

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