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NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

washingtonpost.com

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Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#281

Post by spikels »

icelancer wrote: post #246
allochthon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just cut all cables to the US, ... deny US citizens to enter any foreign country and then just do your shit over there and get happy with it. Whoah, there. Your grievances are well-placed. But keep in mind that it's a certain subset of agencies in the US government that are responsible for the problems you're upset about, not all US citizens. As for fixing things, the government has become literally unmanagea…

>not all US citizens The vast majority of citizens support these initiatives. Given the winner-take-all approach we employ, it is not a stretch to say that yes, we all share blame.

Where did you get the idea the "vast majority of citizens support these initiatives"?

From the very start the polls have generally been against mass NSA surveillance except when the wording of the poll was misleading[1]. As more and more information has come out the polls have become more and more clearly against it[2].

Try to keep the facts straight.

Not sure why you refer to winner-take-all and how that concept could make everyone responsible. Keep in mind almost know one knew about this until very recently and we learned more even today.

[1] http://www.policymic.com/articles/53767/nsa-surveillance-sca...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/polls-continue-show-ma...

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#282

Post by allochthon »

devx wrote: post #260
allochthon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just cut all cables to the US, ... deny US citizens to enter any foreign country and then just do your shit over there and get happy with it. Whoah, there. Your grievances are well-placed. But keep in mind that it's a certain subset of agencies in the US government that are responsible for the problems you're upset about, not all US citizens. As for fixing things, the government has become literally unmanagea…

Unfortunately, not only do a lot of US citizens still support such practices (I think around 40 percent - as long as they mention "to protect you from terrorists"), but most of the rest who don't agree with the practices, can't be bothered to do much about it, like even calling their representative, let alone going out and protesting. I do believe this is very true: > All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for…

With this argument, you're implicitly assuming responsibility for the misdeeds of your own government. It's easy to cast blame en masse, but it is not a constructive response.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#283

Post by nrmilstein »

smoyer wrote: post #276

Would anyone else be interested in inserting a private version of a tracking pixel into each of their e-mails, so that you'd get a list of IP addresses where the mail was viewed back? It would be interesting to see where mail was read versus where it is simply passed in plain text. Crowd-sourcing anonymous data might also allow us to determine which IP addresses belong to the NSA's systems.

I doubt the NSA is foolish enough to make external requests to load images in the emails they read.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#284

Post by selmnoo »

cromwellian wrote: post #238
selmnoo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an unbelievably stupid line of thinking. Kidnapped their children? Get a hold of yourself here. Google is a tech company, it is a perfectly reasonable expectation that they get the big parts of their security model right. Not encrypting data going through leased (or even their own) fibers? Big, big mistake. NSA and US government aside, Google dropped the ball big-time here. > Why do I sometimes get the feeling t…

Security is based on threat model. The spooks have capabilities that far exceed the threat models most companies assume from private blackhats. You think it is obvious to assume in hindsight that the government would dig up and tap your dark fiber, but you don't think it obvious the government would plant spies to do in-side-the-data-center taps. Now what? Encrypt all data between switches? The Soviets didn't think t…

I'm not getting through to you.

At the end of the day, Google lost. To a considerable extent, cloud lost. People who were trusting Google with their data lost. What is ostensibly true at this point at is that Google could have done something to have prevented this. All else is immaterial. Just like I would expect to lose business if I made a mistake and had data compromised (because doing X and Y was too difficult or too costly for me to do, because it was 'outside' my control, because I was too inept, or whatever else), Google should expect to lose some business the same way. If security is based on a threat model -- and it eventually loses, it was bad security.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#285

Post by [deleted] »

danbruc wrote: post #241
einehexe wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had read the article you would know that this data was given to the NSA by the GHCQ. Would you cut off the UK? Australia and Canada?

I read the article. But I am not angry because of the actual incidents - what makes me angry is the sentiment, thinking of non-US people as second class humans. And I would happily lunch everybody into outer space who does this, including everyone from my own country, Germany.

[deleted]

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#286

Post by mml »

dragonwriter wrote: post #33
tonyplee wrote: post #3

"vice president for security engineering Eric Grosse announced that the company is racing to encrypt the links between its data centers. " Isn't this useless? They can serve Google NSL and the court can force the company to release the SSL keys for the encryptions - just like Lavabit. Google CEO/Board can not shutdown the company like Lavabit. What can they do, get out of USA like how they got out of China?

> Isn't this useless? No. > They can serve Google NSL and the court can force the company to release the SSL keys for the encryptions - just like Lavabit. They can't do that without Google knowing about it, knowing what data is covered by the NSL and having the opportunity to challenge the request, or to factor the fact of the requests and the extent of information covered by it in evaluating Google's lobbying priori…

I find it funny how many people say "x is going to move out of the US!". Upon doing so, x isn't protected from spying bye the NSA at _all_, not even the flimsy toothless protections we have as US citizens under US law. Ostensibly, the entire _job_ of the NSA is to spy on foreigners, which you become when you leave.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#287

Post by dragonwriter »

tippytop wrote: post #277
tptacek wrote: post #2

It's hard not to come to the conclusion that these activities were essentially criminal. I don't see how the administration can fail to disavow them, investigate them fully, and hold their instigators accountable. It feels like Special Prosecutor time. That aside, let me re-make a point I keep making: Google had no knowledge of NSA's physical compromise of their data centers. But still, they pushed harder than anyone…

> Google had no knowledge of NSA's physical compromise of their data centers. How do you know this is the case? In the diagram submitted within the article, the box highlighted with the smiley face is labeled "GFE" for Google Front-End [1], which means it's a Google controlled server. It seems more plausible to me that the NSA compromised this target with a FISA court order rather than hacking it. And if that is true…

> How do you know this is the case? In the diagram submitted within the article, the box highlighted with the smiley face is labeled "GFE" for Google Front-End [1], which means it's a Google controlled server.

Yeah, its the external facing server that is the boundary between Google's (encrypted) communication with outside systems and its internal network which doesn't use encryption.

> It seems more plausible to me that the NSA compromised this target with a FISA court order rather than hacking it.

If you read the article, the leak of documents that included the diagram indicates that:

1. The GFE server itself wasn't compromised, whether by a court order or hacking -- the unsecured communications which occur "behind" the GFE server were compromised, and

2. The entity which compromised the unsecured communications wasn't the NSA, but Britain's GCHQ. The NSA gets information from the compromised system because GCHQ allows NSA to submit search terms ("selectors") which are matched against the data GCHQ collects from tapping Google (and Yahoo!) unsecured internal comms, and then feeds the data matching the selectors back to the NSA.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#289

Post by danbruc »

einehexe wrote: post #270
danbruc wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article. But I am not angry because of the actual incidents - what makes me angry is the sentiment, thinking of non-US people as second class humans. And I would happily lunch everybody into outer space who does this, including everyone from my own country, Germany.

If you are not angry at the GHCQ for tapping Google and Yahoo then I don't know what to tell you.

I am missing a »primarily« between »not« and »angry«. Spying at innocent citizens is a crime, no doubt, but I still find this attitude of not treating all people equal way more worrisome.

Re: NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

#290

Post by judk »

blumkvist wrote: post #223
danbruc wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am at a loss for words. Arrogant, self-righteous, disrespectful, ignorant, mendacious...nothing cuts it. It is illegal in the US but who cares about the rest of the world? I can not remember when something similar made me that angry as the current conduct of the US does. If I would not know better that this would negatively affect the whole world and innocent US citizens and that emotional reactions are usually not…

I had the exact same feelings when I saw so many people go "They will just borrow more money" in the recent US govt. shutdown. The arrogance is unbelievable. Shows complete lack of remorse over leeching off the rest of the world. Very disappointed in the american citizens' reaction to the catastrophic political decisions their leaders have been making for decades.

Borrowing money at interest is not leeching. That is not how macroeconomics works. Defaulting is maybe leeching.

Manipulating the defacto world currency -- that is leeching.

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