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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'

#581

Post by ssafejava »

antimatter15 wrote: post #137

I wonder how Sencha ( http://www.sencha.com/ ) feels about how the NSA is clearly using their ExtJS framework given the screenshots. I guess this kind of puts different perspective to the whole debate that came from JSMin's "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause ( http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code ) given that conceivably your open source framework might be a significant part of…

ExtJS is widely used on government systems and has been for years. If you want to deploy a rich web application that can handle large data tables with infinite scroll, filtering, sorting, etc., and run it all on IE >= 6 ExtJS is your only feasible choice.

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

#582

Post by bobbydavid »

anon268 wrote: post #362
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…

I have "friends" (read: we mostly argue about this) who fit your description. They will tell you that there are rules in place to prevent spying on Americans (and if you take a look at the Foreignness Factor screenshots, there is a sense in which this is true) They will also tell you that the benefits outweigh the cost. Here we have a system that has allegedly caught 300 terrorists, and they would tell you that spyin…

if you take as given that the NSA has prevented 300 9/11 attacks from occurring, you may feel it is justified.

surely you don't believe the premise, but as a thought experiment pretend it were true. would the NSA actions be justified?

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

#583

Post by drivebyacct2 »

Karunamon wrote: post #383
jacquesm wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

Moral judgements are subjective opinion by nature, fair enough, but I bring the crackpot label in for exactly what you say, thinking in absolutes, in black and white, instead of nuance. In the real world, that shows a distressing lack of critical thinking and a further distressing abundance of dogmatism. "Proprietary software is bad" -- Subjective value judgement. "Properitary software is evil" -- Subjective value ju…

You really want it both ways don't you. Ignore that Stallman was right AND continue to paint him as a crackpot. You just don't get it do you? You're drawing a completely arbitrary line. Who are you to say that he has no thought behind avoiding proprietary software as a matter of principle? I am willing to bet he could enumerate far more reasons for his position than you could.

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

#584

Post by aroman »

shirro wrote: post #547
aroman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not condoning their actions, but in case you need a more clear example of where this paradigm breaks down: IBM & Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany in general, etc. Ironically, sillicon valley came into existence building military SIGINT/ELINT systems for the cold war.[0] [0] www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ

I think there is a developing consensus that the emerging US police state (and that of its allies) aren't appropriate for constitutional democracies. Comparing them to Nazi experiments or nuclear weapons is still a bit premature. The potential is there for it to turn really ugly which is why the time for political action is now. But national security is important and worthwhile within constitutional limits and under…

Totally agree with everything you've said. I wasn't trying to equate helping the NSA build spy tools with building equipment for the Nazis -- just how doing so can be a slippery slope because it scales to such awful things as well.

I guess I felt the need to comment because it sounded like you were saying, "Hey, I get why they're doing it. Sounds like it'd be fun!", and I feel like having that attitude (even if I trust someone like you to know to stop before things get truly out of control) is dangerous.

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

#585

Post by bobbydavid »

MichaelGG wrote: post #471
scrrr wrote: post #377

"Mr. Does your company offer a backdoor for the government? It looks like it, even though you have declared that there was no backdoor just a few weeks ago!" - "Uhm. Not wittingly!"

That's like accusing AT&T of having a backdoor because your apartment has thin walls and someone could overhear. Or that your ISP has a backdoor because your WiFi isn't encrypted. The FBI was doing this decades ago with Carnivore. Why is it at all surprising that such a program continues to collect unencrypted information you sent over the Internet?

access.

any citizen can go out and listen to public conversations, but we are not all invited to put our e-stethoscopes up to the internet backbone.

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

#586

Post by vabmit »

uptown wrote: post #577
vabmit wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so. Yes. IIRC, the first time I saw this leaked was a combo leak by a Navy Seal and a member of the Executive. The Seal leaked that they powered down Bin Laden's computers to take his hard drives after they shot him. The Executive member said that the drives were encrypted and it would take a few days to get the data. Jihadis are known to use a custom version of PGP with 2048bit RSA keys. They either used tha…

I know nothing about this stuff, so apologies for my naiveté, but what technical barriers prevent us from changing from 2048 bit encryption to something of a much much greater magnitude? 2,048,000 bit (or whatever).

RNG/PRNG output quality and the internals of the algorithms.

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

#587

Post by phaus »

deveac wrote: post #218
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…

>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've been hearing about the NSA's massive data center in Utah for well over a year, from public news sources. They have always suspected that it's main purpose was the warehousing of American's private communications.

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

#588

Post by coderrr »

LeeLorean wrote: post #580
qaruxj wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did nobody look at the PowerPoint itself? From page 17 ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jul/31/nsa... ): > * Show me all the VPN startups in country X, and give me the data so I can decrypt and discover the users. > * These events are easily browsable in XKEYSCORE As I understand it (and I may be wrong), most encrypted VPN traffic uses SSL. Given that XKeyscore data is only held for a few days (due…

Yes, it seems like they have broken VPN or SSL in some way. Perhaps they own or subsidize many of the cheaper VPN like has been rumoured for Private Internet Access? https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/

Uh, no. We aren't subsidized by the NSA or any part of any government or any organization or person for that matter. We bootstrapped Private Internet Access with 500$ and a lot of caffeine and have been profitable since our second month in operation.

We believe what the NSA is referring to when talking about "VPN startups" is the initial stages of PPTP sessions. PPTP has been crackable for a while, check out moxie's cloudcracker.com. We believe it highly unlikely that they have broken OpenVPN (which is what our application uses) or SSL.

Please see our stance on PRISM: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2013/06/prism/

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

#589

Post by anigbrowl »

tedks wrote: post #493
Karunamon wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not feasible for the average person to restrict their lives to the point that RMS does and advocates for. * Reading the web via email only * Using completely free software and hardware (which as far as I can tell, limits you to a very small subset of Linux on a single Chinese-made netbook) * Not carrying a cellphone * Not using any social networks. Stallman's principled stand is admirable, but untenable for most…

* RMS reads the web via email because he's traveling virtually all the time and rarely has Internet access. A batch-based system makes more sense for him. This isn't an ethical stance, and the fact you include it hits your credibility severely. * The FSF uses computers other than Yeeloongs. The FSF also doesn't really care about free hardware. The Yeeloong has chips with non-free firmware burnt in, and the FSF doesn'…

RMS reads the web via email because he's traveling virtually all the time and rarely has Internet access

Surely you can't expect people to take this argument seriously. It's easy to get internet access on the go in much of the world already.

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

#590

Post by anigbrowl »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #330
talmand wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's news about terrorist plots being foiled all the time. Why are you assuming there's no overlap? It's quite common in terrorist trials for some of the evidence to be sealed from the public (this isn't unconstitutional, as long as the defense gets to look at it).
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