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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

#81

Post by knowaveragejoe »

kimlelly wrote: post #45
brandonbloom wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being down voted because your comment is entirely non-constructive. 1) Calling people insane won't win you any favors. 2) "WAKE UP" is an entirely useless platitude. 3) Simply not using "NSA companies" is completely impractical. Not everyone can afford to be a recluse eccentric by ignoring the largest software providers on the planet. Never mind the fact that switching to an alternative in mass would simply pr…

> Calling people insane won't win you any favors. I say exactly what it IS. It IS INSANE. I do NOT give a fuck about any favors. I don't care about any fucking karma points - we're turning into a turn-key totalitarian system, and people act like nothing has changed. You got https://prism-break.org/ Now go and do your homework, I'm not your dad.

You must be new to HN. Reddit is probably better suited for you.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#82

Post by rsingel »

lisper wrote: post #72
indiefan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A judge does review the request. Whether that judge "makes sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning" is far from clear. The judge has been hand-picked by John Roberts and only hears the government's side of the case. The FISA court has rejected 0.03 percent of the government's requests. Now, maybe that's just an indication that 99.97% of the government's requests are reasonable, but here's the problem:…

No, a judge does not see an individual request in a 702 order. This is the entire point of the 702 and PRISM -- NSA analysts no longer have to fill out paperwork to get data from Google/Facebook/Etc, so long as they are 51% sure the target is a foreigner. There is one court order per company per year. After that, it's "direct access" - e.g. analyst sends request directly to the company.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#83

Post by jrn »

eddieroger wrote: post #47
kimlelly wrote: post #28

I'll say it again, because I was immediately downvoted into invisibility: You CAN NOT continue to use products and services by NSA companies like Microsoft - Yahoo - Google - Facebook - PalTalk - AOL - Skype - YouTube - or Apple and THEN turn around and BITCH AND CRY ABOUT LOSING YOUR RIGHTS AND PRIVACY. This is completely INSANE, you NEED TO WAKE UP! EDIT: Yeah, let the censuring begin again. You know what? When I l…

So instead of repeating what was made invisible, make it a constructive comment. Instead of carrying a Windows Phone, Android or iPhone, which smartphone should I carry? How can I start getting my friends off Facebook so I can close my account without losing those connections? I'm not trying to make the argument to stay, but without viable alternatives, people won't leave.

blackberry for phones, not sure about facebook alternatives.

edit: also bbm is going cross platform soon, so that may give an encrypted social network alternative, haven't used it though. also I think they gave india/dubai a backdoor a couple years ago? so who's to say, whether they would be compelled to cough up to the nsa as well.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#84

Post by sneak »

leephillips wrote: post #61
samsnelling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The prevailing theory is that they do the latter; the former would be both easy to detect (at the time of splice) and locate (via TDR).

Getting the signal out of the fiber pales in comparison, though, with the task of getting all of that data back to Maryland/Utah.

Unless they have specific cooperation of the cable owners and can tap/split the fibers at the landings, they must be spending a significant percentage of the cost of the original fiber runs (in parallel cables to return the tapped data). The mind reels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_(SSN-23)

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#85

Post by jeltz »

laxatives wrote: post #51
brandonbloom wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being down voted because your comment is entirely non-constructive. 1) Calling people insane won't win you any favors. 2) "WAKE UP" is an entirely useless platitude. 3) Simply not using "NSA companies" is completely impractical. Not everyone can afford to be a recluse eccentric by ignoring the largest software providers on the planet. Never mind the fact that switching to an alternative in mass would simply pr…

Avoiding Microsoft, Google, and Apple doesn't leave many smart phone options either.

There is always the Blackberry.

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#86

Post by [deleted] »

leephillips wrote: post #61
samsnelling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#87

Post by foobarqux »

sneak wrote: post #84
leephillips wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The prevailing theory is that they do the latter; the former would be both easy to detect (at the time of splice) and locate (via TDR). Getting the signal out of the fiber pales in comparison, though, with the task of getting all of that data back to Maryland/Utah. Unless they have specific cooperation of the cable owners and can tap/split the fibers at the landings, they must be spending a significant percentage of…

Beam splitters don't cause any reflections?

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#88

Post by lisper »

rsingel wrote: post #82
lisper wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A judge does review the request. Whether that judge "makes sure it's not overly broad or based on flimsy reasoning" is far from clear. The judge has been hand-picked by John Roberts and only hears the government's side of the case. The FISA court has rejected 0.03 percent of the government's requests. Now, maybe that's just an indication that 99.97% of the government's requests are reasonable, but here's the problem:…

No, a judge does not see an individual request in a 702 order. This is the entire point of the 702 and PRISM -- NSA analysts no longer have to fill out paperwork to get data from Google/Facebook/Etc, so long as they are 51% sure the target is a foreigner. There is one court order per company per year. After that, it's "direct access" - e.g. analyst sends request directly to the company.

First I've heard of this 51% thing. If it's true (and I don't doubt it) then the situation is even worse than I thought. Do you have a reference?

Re: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

#89

Post by rsingel »

jellicle wrote: post #44
btipling wrote: post #2

> "collection directly from the servers" So either Snowden has incorrect slides, the slides are falsified, or everyone has been lying. Actual evidence of direct access would be better than these slides. I would like someone from Google, Facebook, et al to testify under oath that there is no direct access. Or maybe even the NSA, but we know they share inaccuracies under oath, so maybe that isn't worth so much.

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…

This is close but wrong in some very important ways.

CALEA does not apply to Google (except Google fiber and perhaps Google Voice). Google does have to comply with FBI requests for emails and stored data, but they do not have to comply with CALEA (which mandates technical standards for the wiretapping of the phone network and most internet networks). Google does NOT have to build real-time domestic spying tools for the government, though it is arguable whether the 702 program (which PRISM is part of) does.

The FBI would LOVE to extend CALEA to Facebook and Google, etc, but this has not happened yet.

That said, it is likely that the FBI's backbone spying network (DCSNET), which was built for CALEA, is being used for PRISM.

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