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

theguardian.com

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

#351

Post by skore »

sbi wrote: post #241
skore wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sir Thomas More decides that he would rather die than lie or betray his faith. And one moment he is arguing with the particularly vicious which hunting prosecutor. A servant of the king and a hungry and ambitious man. And More says: “You’d break the law to punish the devil, wouldn’t you?” The prosecutor says: “break it? I’d cut down every law in England if that would take it to catch him”. “Yes you would, wouldn’t yo…

These are quotes from the Bolt drama "A Man for All Seasons," not Sir Thomas More himself.

Guess it was one of those days where Hitchens had a drink too many and got his quotes mixed up.

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

#352

Post by VikingCoder »

duncans wrote: post #88
eksith wrote: post #10

That UI looks awfully similar to a theme I've seen used in SharePoint Portal Server. I hope that's not what they use for the front end, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Pretty sure it isn't - some of it looks like old ExtJS if anything. The more worrying thing is that they're still apparently using IE6. [EDIT: OK the presentation is from 2008 but still !]

This, to me, is like showing the alleged UI on an Apple IIc:

It just about proves that it's not true, to me.

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

#353

Post by MrKurtz »

quaunaut wrote: post #217
nikcub wrote: post #29

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. I can see how they get HTTP information, since they would intercept at transit hubs - but how are they getting all Facebook private messages and Gmail? I was also looking for another unique ID that users ar…

Just want to clarify something: > I can see how they get HTTP information, since they would intercept at transit hubs - but how are they getting all Facebook private messages and Gmail? I don't know how they're getting GMail(and this is probably a slide from when GMail was accessible via HTTP and not HTTPS), but Facebook chat specifically is done over a non-secure XMPP server. The only 'secure' part of that transacti…

You're right the slides are pre default HTTPS gmail (2007/8).

But even then gmail is the only webmail service that offers server-to-server encryption, so data can still get intercepted when communicating with someone using yahoo mail or hotmail for example: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57590389-38/how-web-mail-p...

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

#354

Post by motters »

akmiller wrote: post #141

Honest, maybe naive question, but what types of programmers actively help build and maintain systems like this? I turned down a job for a company that is less than a mile from my house because I viewed their business as immoral. Hard for me to fathom anyone taking a job, helping to build systems like this. I get that many of the components of a system like this could be seen as harmless. However, a system of this com…

Times are hard and if it's a choice between your personal morals and feeding your kids or ensuring that your home doesn't get repossessed then there are likely to be plenty of programmers willing to make the compromise.

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

#356

Post by cnlwsu »

Ok, so ignoring all moral/ethical issues with this. Wouldn't it just be awesome to work on a project like this? Unheard of funds, tons of data, interesting CS problems all around. I am sure they did everything possible to make it miserable on the developers but nonetheless... sounds fun from a completely detached CS perspective.

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

#357

Post by [deleted] »

stordoff wrote: post #106
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…

Did the Guardian change the slide? I couldn't see that slide, and it has now appeared with a value of 1234567890.

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by jacquesm »

Karunamon wrote: post #269
jacquesm wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principled != crackpot. Crackpot is an insult intended for the feeble minded and is used to reduce any opinions a person might hold on a subject as reject-able out of hand. Over unity energy generation from the vacuum is rightly labeled as 'crackpot' imo, Stallman's position, while extreme should (again, imo) not be labeled as such.

Where Stallman breaks from admirable principle and dives into untenable crackpottery, IMO, is where he calls proprietary software evil.

Crackpot => unsupported by evidence.

Calling proprietary software evil is an opinion, and there are plenty of examples of evidence that proprietary software was created in ways that one could label as evil. Give it a while and there might be some revelation which will cause lots of people to go 'oh, that Stallman was such a visionary, calling proprietary software evil'.

Now on this particular aspect of Stallman's reasoning I find him hard to follow because that would mean a whole class of something is bad whereas I believe it should only apply to instances on a case-by-case basis. But I'm going to hedge my bets here and sit it out for the next decade or two (assuming I have that much time remaining) to see if he might not be on to something again that is still hard to see from where we are standing right now.

One way in which this could play out is that in order to avoid certain societal fates is to have nothing but open source for certain classes of application (for instance, voting computers, software in use by the government in general or software that is used to power network infrastructure).

Don't be too quick to judge, Stallman has been right more often than I'm comfortable with on some of his most 'extreme' views.

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

#359

Post by jberryman »

stordoff wrote: post #106
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…

Did the Guardian change the slide? I couldn't see that slide, and it has now appeared with a value of 1234567890.

The relevant slide is inline in the article, under the first appearance of the string "facebook". It was apparently redacted by the gaurdian; see nwh's link to the archived page below.

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

#360

Post by md224 »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #260
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…

First of all: keep the staggering to a minimum. Second: realizing that "we should have known" and "none of this is new" isn't so much about reading news articles and being "plugged in", but rather having an understanding of how the Internet works. To oversimplify greatly, you're essentially playing a very precise game of telephone between around 10-20 different people, and usually about 1-3 different publicly-owned c…

I understand your point, but you fail to realize that comments like "why are you surprised?" induce a kind of digital bystander effect: they're essentially defusing moral outrage via social proof. If you read a comment like that, you may think to yourself, "well, this originally seemed like something worth loudly protesting, but if everyone already knows about it, then I guess it must not be that big of a deal." It has the effect of numbing outrage regardless of the outrage's merit, and I can't see how that's productive.

If you feel that the outrage is in fact without merit, then attack that on logical/rational grounds, not by appealing to social proof.

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