NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by aiiane » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:05 AM UTC

hindsightbias wrote: post #204

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 Citation required. > Not only that, but Google launched a high-profile effort to encrypt the communications inside and between their data centers. When exactly was that announced? Before or after Snowden went rogue? If after, the agency had to tell the PRISM partners that they were going to be exposed if they were willing participants in hosting a back-door. Otherwise, they only got paranoid…

Technically, it's impossible to prove a negative. That said, what more evidence do you want than everything Google has done to combat this, including preemptively working to encrypt cross-dc traffic?

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

#442

Post by rhizome » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:06 AM UTC

devx wrote: post #123

Here, Google - show us how much you care about user privacy and security, and join Lavabit and Silent Circle's alliance for the "Dark Mail" protocol: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/30/lavabit-a... Meanwhile I'll be waiting impatiently.

Actually, the real test will be whether Google and Yahoo file amicus briefs in Lavabit's appeal.

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

#443

Post by brymaster » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:06 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #389

kamjam wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't too long ago that Obama himself said Ed Snowden was not a patriot. Said it then, will say it again. The hypocrisy just reeks.

Snowden isn't a patriot though. Certainly he has revealed a lot of scary information about the government that the people needed to know about, but opposing the state (which is what Snowden seems to do) does not always equate to supporting the nation. Some of Snowden's disclosures have been directly harmful to American interests without a corresponding harm being done to the American people that would have warranted…

> Snowden isn't a patriot though.

Yes he is. He gave up his life and comfort in order to reveal illegal, massive surveillance by the US Government and friends. That's what actual patriots and heroes do.

> Certainly he has revealed a lot of scary information about the government that the people needed to know about, but opposing the state (which is what Snowden seems to do) does not always equate to supporting the nation.

This kind of statement is a sophists trick used to justify the unjustifiable: "Spying is typically bad but he revealed spying done by our own government!"

> Some of Snowden's disclosures have been directly harmful to American interests without a corresponding harm being done to the American people that would have warranted that disclosure. For instance, his leak of details of NSA hacking attempts against China.

The NSA are the ones causing the actual harm. Also, China boogeyman card.

> Likewise, his disclosures about spying against allied heads-of-state. Knowing what your friends truly think would be invaluable for American interests when negotiating. I certainly agree that spying on friends like that is distasteful, but revealing that can't possibly be said to have helped the American people.

Sounds like 1984 Ingsoc. Diplomacy with "friends" should be honest. Not conducted as "trust but verify" Reagan-esque bullshit.

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

#444

Post by caseydurfee » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:07 AM UTC

Zelphyr wrote: post #79

betterunix wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would outrage the public? ESPN being shut down. Most people do not actually care about their privacy. Even if everyone had the technical chops needed to understand what has been happening, most people never spend much time contemplating the importance of privacy rights.

> You know what would outrage the public? ESPN being shut down. No better way to state it. Our government is fucking us with our pants on but we're too distracted (by people getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars to throw a fucking ball around) to care.

Why the contempt for professional sports?

Given that geeks are more likely to fix this stuff, why not talk about blocking hacker news, twitch.tv and reddit? What about political sites Politico, Huffington Post, Slate, that treat politics like sports -- who "won the morning", who's going to win Iowa in 2016, etc., deserve a lot more blame for peoples' political ignorance and apathy than a site that treats sports like sports.

It's a quintessentially American view, though -- my pleasures are above reproach, while yours mark you as a cretin. Nobody who likes things you don't like could be smart!

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

#445

Post by Sundog » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:07 AM UTC

swombat wrote: post #113

sixothree wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen no indication that Google considers the NSA any sort of opponent.

I think they do now. There has to be some sort of sense of personal professionalism of the many highly qualified security experts working at Google, that is hurt by the revelations that the NSA basically fucked them over and drew a slide with a smiley face on it about how they fucked them over.

Could not believe the fucking smiley face. That's their attitude towards privacy.

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

#446

Post by raldi » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

selmnoo wrote: post #205

cromwellian wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also blame your car company when a thief breaks into it? Do you never trust banks again if a bank robbery happens? They were working on it, but full-on encryption everywhere within your internal network is expensive, and one tends to not imagine that buried dark fiber is dug up and tapped by one's own government. Let's say that they encrypted everything, and then you learn the NSA had kidnapped the children of…

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…

> What an unbelievably stupid line of thinking.

Sentences like that have no place on HN.

> Kidnapped their children? Get a hold of yourself here.

It's supposed to be an extreme example. He's trying to probe your boundaries -- if you'd forgive them in the kidnapping example, he could then name a somewhat less extreme example, like if the CIA had broken into a Googler's home to plant a recording device.

But, since you totally dodged the question, the opportunity was missed.

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

#447

Post by aiiane » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

selmnoo wrote: post #284

cromwellian wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You mean like the things that Google has done, as soon as the threat vector seemed credible?

http://www.informationweek.com/security/government/nsa-fallo...

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

#448

Post by mpyne » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:11 AM UTC

andrewcooke wrote: post #438

mpyne wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden isn't a patriot though. Certainly he has revealed a lot of scary information about the government that the people needed to know about, but opposing the state (which is what Snowden seems to do) does not always equate to supporting the nation. Some of Snowden's disclosures have been directly harmful to American interests without a corresponding harm being done to the American people that would have warranted…

first; you seem to be saying that each leak in isolation has to weigh in favour of the american people. a more lenient judgement might be made by taking everything as a whole and seeing if the benefits outweigh the costs. and even when the advantage is not direct, it may come later - for example, the international pressure from the leaks about intercepting foreign heads of states might lead to reduced surveillance of…

> first; you seem to be saying that each leak in isolation has to weigh in favour of the american people.

Yes, I would certainly argue that someone claiming to act in the patriotic interests of the people of a nation should do things that are in that interest. Remember that by Snowden's own admission, he deliberately selected each individual batch of documents for later disclosure, it's not Manning-style indiscriminate collection of material to leak later.

On the other hand there is a very workable explanation to explain Snowden's actions: A belief that government is oppressive and wrong, with a corresponding imperative to harm that government. So it is here. You could argue that Snowden feels that by breaking the government that overall good things would happen for Americans, but his individual actions are certainly being conducted without regard to harm. So I would argue that he's anti-government, but not necessarily patriotic.

> but then we get to the american duplicity - they seem to want to be our friends, shake our hands, but then treat us as second class people.

That's hardly a trait unique to America and I think you know that. Remember that much of the outcry in the U.S. is very much because the NSA is treating American data the same as they treat foreign data. But either way, national governments work in the best interests of their citizens, not others. It's hard enough to convince people in America to maintain even existing levels of foreign aid for example.

As one of the French intelligence professionals mentioned, they spy on us too and if anything, are jealous of the abilities the NSA has.

The "more international" idea you talk about is certainly the direction we need to go down (as I've argued since Snowden first hit the news). Right now the global Internet is simply not working well with the ideal of individual national legal frameworks. But what solution will that be?

Somehow I suspect those on HN won't be satisfied with simply scaling up Five Eyes to include Western European governments as well, and as of yet there's no pan-world government to kick the task up to. Nor do I think that nations will (or should) completely give up on SIGINT.

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

#449

Post by bandushrew » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:13 AM UTC

This seems like a good time to remember that Google has been storing wifi access passwords in plain text on its servers, and (presumably) passing them between its data centers.

It can be assumed that as a consequence of google's decision to store passwords in plaintext, the NSA now have access to every wifi access point that has been used by an android device.

This is a massive security breach. I sincerely hope google notifies android users of the problem.

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

#450

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 12:16 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #41

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…

> 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. The government takes the position that their agents are almost completely unconstrained by law when it comes to actions taken abroad aimed at non-US persons. Even we…

I'm sure the other branches of US government would be delighted if NSA would share with them - not the secret data, but their data processing tools.

I mean, it appears that NSA has the ability to separate the retrieved gmail data into citizens and non-citizens, so they can legally use the non-citizen part of data and throw the 'forbidden' US-citizen data away. Think of the wonders that we could do with such technology! We wouldn't need passports anymore, when arriving from another country, you just provide your gmail account, TSA systems check that you're a citizen and lets you right in with a smile...