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The NSA slide you haven’t seen

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#61

Post by leephillips »

samsnelling wrote: post #21
runjake wrote: post #18

Once again, I suggest everyone interested read James Bamford's book Shadow Factory. All these revelations regarding call metadata, PRISM collection (albeit under a different codename at the time), modern fiber taps, and even more are covered. You'll learn about how they shave fiber optic cables in order to intercept traffic and not be detected. You'll find out about the various facilities already reported, along with…

Thanks for this! I've been looking for more to read (I just went back and re-read 1984). ... I thought one of the points of Fiber was that you couldn't tap in without disturbing the optical signal? Did I just make that up in my head?

I don't see why that would be true. This is classical signal transmitted optically, not quantum cryptography. There is no reason you couldn't splice the cable through a machine that recorded the signal and then recreated it. Or a beam splitter that removed just a small fraction of the signal; the effect would be a slight increase in transmission loss.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#62

Post by [deleted] »

runjake wrote: post #18

Once again, I suggest everyone interested read James Bamford's book Shadow Factory. All these revelations regarding call metadata, PRISM collection (albeit under a different codename at the time), modern fiber taps, and even more are covered. You'll learn about how they shave fiber optic cables in order to intercept traffic and not be detected. You'll find out about the various facilities already reported, along with…

[deleted]

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#63

Post by [deleted] »

runjake wrote: post #18

Once again, I suggest everyone interested read James Bamford's book Shadow Factory. All these revelations regarding call metadata, PRISM collection (albeit under a different codename at the time), modern fiber taps, and even more are covered. You'll learn about how they shave fiber optic cables in order to intercept traffic and not be detected. You'll find out about the various facilities already reported, along with…

[deleted]

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#64

Post by SpikeGronim »

mindcrime wrote: post #31
runjake wrote: post #18

Once again, I suggest everyone interested read James Bamford's book Shadow Factory. All these revelations regarding call metadata, PRISM collection (albeit under a different codename at the time), modern fiber taps, and even more are covered. You'll learn about how they shave fiber optic cables in order to intercept traffic and not be detected. You'll find out about the various facilities already reported, along with…

In addition to The Shadow Factory he also wrote The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets . I'm not sure how much material is shared between the three books, or if they're meant to be read in any certain order, but I'm plowing through The Puzzle Palace now. In any case, it's wildly interesting stuff.

I've read all of those books. They cover the NSA chronologically, so there isn't much overlap. I would recommend all of them. (edited: typo)

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#65

Post by [deleted] »

randomnick852 wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, one or both of these slides has been edited. I doubt that someone went back to the NSA to get "the latest version" that makes me wonder who did the editing and what was their motivation? Did the guardian change the map to make it more relevant to the "global nature" of their coverage? Did someone change it for WaPo to make it seem more credible? And the redacting part, who redacted it and why? Neither slide…

I would guess WaPo edited the map. For the Guardian's version of slide it seems easy to guess that those are the names of secret programs use to tap fiber-optic cables in certain regions. NSA wanted 2 names of those programs to remain secret. (i have some theory why..). WaPo published the names but edited the map not to give precise locations of those programs. Just my theory ofc.

[deleted]

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#66

Post by pvnick »

indiefan wrote: post #55
jellicle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're getting the info directly from Google et al., but they don't have root on Google's servers. Google is required by law (CALEA, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) to provide the ability for law enforcement to get information from them. This includes - required by law - the ability both to get stored data and to make real-time intercepts of new communications. Google is paid a fee to provide…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you left out the step where a judge reviews the request to make sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning. Aside from that I'd say it's a very clear, and it's sad that there seems to be a pervasive inference that these companies are something something beyond what our elected law makers have forced them to do. Why isn't more angst directed at the politicians responsible for…

Just like a judge reviewed the request compelling Verizon to turn over the details of every single call being made by everyone to everyone?

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#67

Post by enko »

Locke1689 wrote: post #58
eitland wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you have not made it up in your head. It has been widely accepted as a fact but I guess if it was originally true there must have been a few "givens'.

Who said this? It seems obviously false. All you would have to do is insert a detector and another emitter that simply replays everything the detector reads.

While I agree it's certainly false, your implementation idea would almost certainly introduce detectable delay. All you'd need is a beam splitter. You can manufacture them to only take 1% of the beam.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#68

Post by pvnick »

sehugg wrote: post #11
oscilloscope wrote: post #6

It may have been published at the Post for the first time, but Guardian released this over a month ago. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...

There is some talk on Twitter about how the Guardian uses OpenOffice primarily which may account for the differences in the slides.

This is where my mind jumped to as well. Especially with regards to the images being comprised of vector graphics, which has always been a pain in the ass to get standard among difference office suites.

Also, if you look between the two versions, you'll see that the Guardian's failed to render the transparency behind the PRISM logo. This definitely points towards rendering mishaps, rather than some sort of editing on their part.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#70

Post by clarkm »

runjake wrote: post #18

Once again, I suggest everyone interested read James Bamford's book Shadow Factory. All these revelations regarding call metadata, PRISM collection (albeit under a different codename at the time), modern fiber taps, and even more are covered. You'll learn about how they shave fiber optic cables in order to intercept traffic and not be detected. You'll find out about the various facilities already reported, along with…

James Bamford also wrote and produced the PBS NOVA documentary "The Spy Factory", which is available for streaming on Netflix.

Edit: It looks like it's been removed from Netflix, but you can still stream it directly from PBS's website:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/spy-factory.html

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