Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 641 posts

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#321

Post by MrKurtz »

madaxe wrote: post #268
MrKurtz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Google (or anyone) link to them directly? with fiber no less! this stuff is alarming enough no need for FUD. This XKS business seems about intercepting non-encrypted traffic as the references to HTTP payload quoted in the article would suggest.

> Why would Google (or anyone) link to them directly? with fiber no less! "They have no direct access to our servers" I wonder what a beam splitter consists of. Oh. A PRISM.

Actually it's: "There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google...

And I tend to believe him.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#322

Post by [deleted] »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #266
deveac wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront of you with screenshots and the capabilities described. It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I'm a practically addicted news j…

> I'm a practically addicted news junkie ... More like a news sheep. The mass market news is and has always been 49% fluff and 49% lies. Comments from people who already knew what the NSA does are not "self aggrandizing". The are other-insulting. You should rightly be ashamed that you walk through life in a news fog of up-to-the-minute minutiae. Read books by retired insiders, talk to current insiders and contractors…

[deleted]

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#323

Post by madaxe »

ISL wrote: post #310
madaxe wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would Google (or anyone) link to them directly? with fiber no less! "They have no direct access to our servers" I wonder what a beam splitter consists of. Oh. A PRISM.

Beam splitters are, in general, not prisms. A prism, as traditionally referred-to (and in the NSA PRISM graphic) separates light of different wavelengths. In a signal tap, you want to split the intensity, not the wavelength. In simplest form, telecom signals are at a single wavelength; passing it through a 'Dark side of the moon' prism will only deflect the beam, not split it. When one refers to a beamsplitter, it's…

You can/do/might use actual prisms for a variety of reasons, however, such as if you're trying to get a frequency-multiplexed set of signals off a single fibre broken down as their constituent components - i.e. bulk data collection from a single tap on a mass fibre bridge.

Anyway, you're probably right, it's probably just bog standard parts, and PRISM was a buzzword for management.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#324

Post by iandanforth »

junto wrote: post #17
martindale wrote: post #13

Interesting; it appears someone failed to redact some data from the slides. In the Facebook chat example, the message is "to" 1536051595. Using the Facebook Graph API, we can gather information based on this ID: http://graph.facebook.com/1536051595 Which leads us to the Facebook profile ( https://www.facebook.com/arash.gorjipour.5 ) of an individual, real or contrived, named "Arash Gorjipour". His email address and p…

Probably picked at random. The screenshot 'test case' could have been you. We are all in the database after all.

I think it's a test account. The text string which reads something like 'does it still recognize me?' is very much like the kind of thing I'd type in my QA days when I was testing a new system.

If I were putting together a deck on that system I'd also probably favor test data over live data, if for no other reason than it's easy to come by.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#325

Post by mturmon »

peterwwillis wrote: post #41
nwh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume that Tor is broken. With this level of deep network monitoring, low-latency onion routing is essentially useless.

Hidden services are still secure, presumably, because there is no exposed section of the network to inspect. All they can do is monitor and do statistical analysis, and maybe mess with the traffic to try to get more ideas of flow.

Historically, it has proven unwise to underestimate the NSA. Not being a booster, just thinking about Keyhole, tapping submarine cables, etc., etc.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#326

Post by lisper »

martindale wrote: post #13

Interesting; it appears someone failed to redact some data from the slides. In the Facebook chat example, the message is "to" 1536051595. Using the Facebook Graph API, we can gather information based on this ID: http://graph.facebook.com/1536051595 Which leads us to the Facebook profile ( https://www.facebook.com/arash.gorjipour.5 ) of an individual, real or contrived, named "Arash Gorjipour". His email address and p…

He's Canadian. And he has dark skin and a funny-sounding name.

He's (almost certainly) a real person, by the way. I called his office. He wasn't in, but they offered to page him for me.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#327

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

talmand wrote: post #165
aspensmonster wrote: post #110

>How do I find a strong-selector for a known target? >How do I find a cell of terrorists that has no known connection to strong-selectors? >Answer: Look for anomalous events >E.g. Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in >Someone who is using encryption >Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff Lovely. Suspicious stuff and encryption. But wait! There's more! >Show me all the VPN startup…

I'd like to know where they are keeping these "over 300 terrorists" that have been captured due to this program. How is one labeled a terrorist by this program I wonder?

I'd like to know how they check for/track false positives.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#329

Post by mariusz79 »

sehugg wrote: post #116
yread wrote: post #12

This is brilliant, I love the screenshots: Foreignness factor: The person has stated that he is located outside the U.S. Human intelligence source indicates person is located outside the U.s. The person is a user of storage media seized outside the U.s. Foreign govt indicates that the person is located outside the U.s. Phone number country code indicates the person is located outside the U.s. Phone number is register…

The person is a user of storage media seized outside the U.s. Interesting, so everyone who ever hit a MegaUpload link is potentially a foreign entity?

Having a 3 1/2" floppy sent to someone outside of the country 15 years ago will probably count as well.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#330

Post by bowlofpetunias »

talmand wrote: post #165
aspensmonster wrote: post #110

>How do I find a strong-selector for a known target? >How do I find a cell of terrorists that has no known connection to strong-selectors? >Answer: Look for anomalous events >E.g. Someone whose language is out of place for the region they are in >Someone who is using encryption >Someone searching the web for suspicious stuff Lovely. Suspicious stuff and encryption. But wait! There's more! >Show me all the VPN startup…

I'd like to know where they are keeping these "over 300 terrorists" that have been captured due to this program. How is one labeled a terrorist by this program I wonder?

This. This is what worries me more than anything. Where have these 300 people gone? There should be records, trials, something. 300 suspected terrorists going on trial over a period of 5 years should have resulted in huge wave of almost 24/7 publicity.

That the NSA is in the business of total surveillance is bad enough. But there is the faint hint that the NSA is in the business of making people disappear.

Post reply on HN