My guess: they realize they are up shit creek because Snowden is about to leak further details of that too. And they hope to soften the blow.
NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
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Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#12So that's not good.
You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists.
But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access to the servers that run Google Mail. They do not have that access; Google has categorically denied it, and the Guardian walked the claim back. The "optical splitters on the Internet backbone" thing doesn't hold water either; most people need to go through some effort not to use strong crypto when communicating with people using Google Mail.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#13> "Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat , disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."" I wonder if this will temper the shrill cries of "this is all partisan!" . Probably not.
As an extreme left-wing Democrat who opposes any attempt by government to acquire non-public information without a warrant, I must ask, what "shrill cries" are those?
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#14So did Obama blatantly lie to us in his statement, or is he not aware what's going on? I have to think, if they admitted it to Congress, Obama had to know.
He said they weren't listening in on calls from Americans, not that they couldn't.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#15So that's not good. You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists. But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access…
THE MAN in the middle
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#16My guess: they realize they are up shit creek because Snowden is about to leak further details of that too. And they hope to soften the blow.
Doesn't seem like they will get very far trying to paddle out without flinging shit elsewhere…
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#17So that's not good. You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists. But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access…
A copy of Google's SSL private keys, provided they don't use cipher modes that provide forward secrecy, would suffice if they'd already tapped all the transit fibers (though not gmail-to-gmail).
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#18[deleted]
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#19So that's not good. You can see how that could be happening; NSA has trunk-level access to telephony circuits. Telcos are engaged in a long-running game of footsie with the government that makes billion dollar Internet companies look like anarcho-capitalists. But I'm not seeing how we get from there to the contents of email. To have the email of arbitrary Americans without a warrant, the NSA would need direct access…
THE MAN in the middle
A huge portion of all Google Mail connections can't be MITM'd even if NSA has an SSL CA banked, because Google baked the identity of their public key into their browser (using public key pinning).
File that under "things you don't do if your goal is to cooperate with NSA surveillance", by the way.
Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
#20Wait - what? Isn't it our leaders consistent position that "listening" without a specific warrant is wrong? Now I am really confused.
This is just an unusually stark demonstration of how it really works: One party stakes out a set of statements and positions with which it will pander to a portion of the population, and then actually do WTF ever they want. Another party stakes out a different set of statements and positions with which it will pander to a different portion of the population, and then do WTF ever they want to do. What both parties want to do is often surprisingly the same.
We let them know what we want to be told, and then they cleverly tell it to us.