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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

#351

Post by mpyne »

grey-area wrote: post #339
leoc wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The slides say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. Guardian states the the slides state that the NSA can collect data directly from the servers of these companies. The slides do say the NSA can "collect data directly from the servers" of these companies. (Well, they say that the NSA uses "collection directly from the servers" of these companies, to get the quotation exactly righ…

Where exactly did the Guardian or Greenwald claim the NSA has root access on servers? I haven't seen that anywhere? Please supply a quote of the part of an article you're referring to so we can make up our own minds about what was said. It's quite possible Guardian journalists and editors summarised some points in a sloppy way due to lack of understanding (in particular using direct access instead of directly from),…

What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access".

The story made it sound like an NSA analyst could just open an xterm and copy any data about any Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/etc. user, whether the company agreed or not. That is the part that is not only false, but which Greenwald has refused to back down on by just pounding the slides over and over.

I don't know why I'm so surprised that a writer reporting on tech-heavy privacy issues would be so clueless about technology but it just gives me even more reason to be jaded about activists in general.

Oh well, at least we still have the EFF and ACLU.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#352

Post by mpyne »

philwelch wrote: post #293
tptacek wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just innuendo.

You're overcommitted to the hypothesis that Google is completely uninvolved based on their own denials which carry close to zero informational value.

Given that your hypothesis is rather outlandish even by the NSA's own slides (which explicitly mention 702 compliance) and would require more Google employees than Page to know and willingly lie about it, I don't see why it should take priority over a hypothesis that actually meets all the Occam wickets.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#353

Post by tptacek »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #328
tptacek wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is bound to lie. That is not a FISA requirement or a requirement of any other federal statute.

You're very naive to believe that. The gov't somehow manages to compel people to lie despite the absence of some "Federal Pants on Fire Act" 1. Place a Warrant Canary. 2. Receive NSL. Even those who've conceived of the Warrant Canary know that it depends upon the notion that the gov't will not coerce the NSL recipient to leave the Canary unmodified. We don't have to use the Warrant Canary hypothetical to see that the…

I don't follow any of this. I don't know what warrant canaries have to do with the fictitious belief that NSLs compel companies to lie.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#354

Post by tptacek »

jacquesm wrote: post #281
tptacek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Justin Schuh is lying about anything that's happening at Google, I'll videotape myself eating a dirty sock.

I'll be happy to supply the sock. > NSA doesn't have Google's private key. And socks come in pairs.

What a classy comment, Jacques.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#355

Post by tptacek »

rdl wrote: post #289
tptacek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have an ethical problem with doing the kind of work I do for defense contractors or for the USG. I'm not saying that doing work for USG, or even software security work for them, or even offensive software security for them is prima facie unethical; I only know that I don't feel qualified to navigate the ethical quagmire, and thankfully am not required to do so. I'm also not a defender of the state. However, of…

Presumably doing Matasano-type appsec work for DoD if it were for internal DoD software would be fine (i.e. making sure the VA's medical records system is relatively secure against outside threats)?

We don't do work like that.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#356

Post by grey-area »

mpyne wrote: post #351
grey-area wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly did the Guardian or Greenwald claim the NSA has root access on servers? I haven't seen that anywhere? Please supply a quote of the part of an article you're referring to so we can make up our own minds about what was said. It's quite possible Guardian journalists and editors summarised some points in a sloppy way due to lack of understanding (in particular using direct access instead of directly from),…

What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access". The story made it sound like an NSA analyst could just open an xterm and copy any data about any Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/etc. user, whether the company agreed or not . That is the part that is not only false, but which Greenwald has refused to back down on by just pounding the slides over and o…

That phrase says nothing about root or xterm and I think you're being misleading by attempting to paraphrase it that way though I think I see how you got there. That's one possible interpretation of it (though not one Greenwald has backed), but it's equally possible, given the assertions of Snowden in the video with the article (which we now know to be true at least for phone calls), that it was an attempt to describe the experience of an analyst using such a system, requesting full access to a user's account, and getting it without interacting with google staff (after what delay we don't know), possibly without any legal paperwork other than making the request. We simply don't know enough details to be able to describe the process any better, we don't even know all the possible sources of intel for it.

Since Greenwald provided the sources for his statement and the article clearly indicates which quotes are attribution and which bits are commentary I didn't interpret it the way you did, and do think it's highly misleading to characterise this as a fundamental flaw in the article, or as something the guardian has 'walked back' - the guardian is not a monolithic entity and features content from all sorts of contradictory viewpoints. The writer wasn't clueless about technology necessarily - remember this sort of writing goes through many hands on the way to publication, and attempts to synthesise knowledge from various sources for a non-technical audience, while not revealing damaging details which could leave them open to prosecution. That process is going to result in text which is not as precise or illuminating as we or the writer would like.

So I'm all for correcting reporters like Greenwald where they over-reach or imply too much, and I do think he should have clarified this particular detail which has been left very vague, but we should clarify or correct, not attack and patronise, reporters who don't specify technical details, and bear in mind that technical questions of mechanism are not the only story here; there are far more important legal and ethical questions.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#357

Post by leoc »

mpyne wrote: post #351
grey-area wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly did the Guardian or Greenwald claim the NSA has root access on servers? I haven't seen that anywhere? Please supply a quote of the part of an article you're referring to so we can make up our own minds about what was said. It's quite possible Guardian journalists and editors summarised some points in a sloppy way due to lack of understanding (in particular using direct access instead of directly from),…

What Greenwald/Guardian said about "direct and unilateral access" is what is meant by the paraphrase of "root access". The story made it sound like an NSA analyst could just open an xterm and copy any data about any Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/etc. user, whether the company agreed or not . That is the part that is not only false, but which Greenwald has refused to back down on by just pounding the slides over and o…

Also note the Google statement from the story:

> In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

A backdoor pretty much implies unfettered (as well as clandestine) access - a limited-privileges backdoor is conceivable, but unlikely. Note that the Guardian didn't say 'here's a weaselly statement that doesn't deny what we're alleging' - it said 'here's a denial of what we are alleging'.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#358

Post by foobarbazqux »

oleganza wrote: post #269
foobarbazqux wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god, when you are older, you will look back and wish that you pursued the "shallow" things in high school. Some of those experiences are not going to be available at any other time in your life. Being an intellectual is overrated; don't be so quick to judge your peers, many of them are wise in ways that you cannot see.

You seem to extrapolate something from his words and then make a judgement. Can you give an example of one "shallow" thing that shouldn't be replaced by "being intellectual" and makes peers "wise in ways"?

I just mean whatever he happens to find shallow. I can't read his mind, I can only speculate. It might be joining the football team. It might be doing donuts in the parking lot. It might be getting drunk at a party and having his first sexual experience. It might be shopping for cool clothing. It might be riding a skateboard. It might be skipping class, getting high, and failing the 10-point math quiz after recess. It might be joining student council. There are hundreds of things to do as a teenager that really have not much at all to do with intellectual activity, but that nevertheless require subtlety and nuance.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#359

Post by Amadou »

Udo wrote: post #329
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #77

Since the modus operandi seems to be for the NSA to suck up everything it can and decide later it seems (wild speculation follows) that the NSA might be sitting on audio recrodings of all your phone calls for the past several years. Can you imagine the number of divorce cases that would impact? Civil lawsuits? Proof of innocence or guilt in a crime? Hell, get a decade or two of this and historians alone would have a…

Having just watched yesterday's RealTime (Bill Maher's show) as well as the mainstream news coverage of the week, I have finally come to the conclusion that no significant number of Americans has a problem with living in a surveillance state, not even the host and guests on a faux liberal talk show. Except when I'm on HN, everywhere I go there just are no people who see anything fundamentally wrong with the entire pr…

I saw that same show and I was similarly disappointed with it. However, my impression was that all of the guests and Maher himself were under-informed. Possibly even misinformed because there were echoes of talking points "Snowden is neither a hero nor a traitor." "Hong Kong is, after-all, China," "Snowden is delusional," "Snowden is a publicity seeker" etc.

Last week, when the story first broke, Maher was ambivalent about it and he justified his ambivalence by focusing on nuclear weapons - as in because nukes can kill so many people the risk is just too great so we need to do everything and anything to stop them.

Obviously he didn't know enough about the situation to understand that dirty bombs are the only nukes that it is even plausible to consider being used by terrorists (rather than foreign governments) and that dirty bombs are all about the dirty and not so much the bomb - fallout over a couple of city blocks and not an explosion that could destroy a city hiroshima style. Still enough to kill hundreds, maybe thousands if an attacker gets everything just right, but not the existential threat that obliterating Manhattan would be.

I'd like to see Greenwald on his show, Greenwald did a pretty good job of calling Maher on his BS regarding the arab spring the last time he was on there. Since he's right in the middle of this story I'm sure he'd do even better.

The only "liberal" group I'm particularly disillusioned with is mediaite - everything I've seen from them on the topic has been despicably underhanded apologisms.

Re: NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

#360

Post by brown9-2 »

drawkbox wrote: post #145
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #77

Since the modus operandi seems to be for the NSA to suck up everything it can and decide later it seems (wild speculation follows) that the NSA might be sitting on audio recrodings of all your phone calls for the past several years. Can you imagine the number of divorce cases that would impact? Civil lawsuits? Proof of innocence or guilt in a crime? Hell, get a decade or two of this and historians alone would have a…

It really is appalling that this isn't more rejected. A couple decades ago impeachment, resignations, firings would happen. Everyone thinks about how this affects us now, how will it affect everyone decades from now? Pretty soon warrants won't be needed at all because Executive Orders override them and are 'legal'. We may as well just remove the 4th amendment since everyone is so scared and complacent.

Why would anyone resign when almost the entire Federal Government is behind this?
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