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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

#511

Post by crucifiction »

generj wrote: post #462
dsl wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: > Google is buying a piece of a new transpacific fiber optic cable Only a half dozen or so companies actually own undersea fiber. It requires a huge amount of effort to lay and maintain including hundred million dollar cable ships. Everyone (even Google) leases, or in this case buys, capacity on shared cables.

Google has the cash to lay their own now though. Or just buy a company which does. I wouldn't be surprised if they do so in the future.

What is the point? If they can tap the cables it seems like owning your own just causes a false sense of security.

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

#512

Post by mnordhoff_ »

danbruc wrote: post #410
dragonwriter wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for example I can not even imagine any EU country doing something like Guantanamo By the information that has publicly come out about the "black sites" operated by the US and its allies -- from which prisoners were later transferred to the not-secret facility at Guatanamo where at least a show of adhering to international humanitarian law was made, several EU countries were actively involved in the system, and the…

Source? If true, I completely missed that side of the story. The worst I could find after a quick search was that the UK allowed extraditions to Guantanamo even after learning about the torture happening there.

IIRC, Poland was the EU country that was the focus of attention.

Skimming Wikipedia's most definitely totally truthy article on the subject [1] (actually, it has a lot of citations, so it should be easy to verify), the UK's only alleged black site was the US base on Diego Garcia, which is "UK", but not "basement in London".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_sit...

Edit (T+18 minutes): Wikipedia lists numerous other European countries as possibly being involved. Information is really sketchy -- they are called "black" sites. Another question is which officials in the lucky host countries even knew about it.

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

#514

Post by a3n »

brown9-2 wrote: post #189
dombili wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that either. They seem to enjoy it and think that this is a game. If you're going to violate our basic rights, at least take it seriously, guys.

This presumes that those developers are building these systems to go after "our basic rights", instead of believing that they are helping to target terrorists and enemy states. What gets lost in a lot of the (justifiable) NSA outrage is the fact that they want all of this technology to enable surveillance of terrorists who use the Internet just like ordinary Americans do. There is really no evidence so far that this…

> There is really no evidence so far that this massive surveillance apparatus is being used in a widespread way to abusively target Americans.

Widespread? Maybe not strictly widespread, but it is being abused. There was that guy recently, I forget the beef the government had with him, they couldn't justify a warrant to search his laptop, so they just waited for him to travel. They put a flag on him, and when he came up registered to fly out of the country they seized and searched his laptop when he crossed back in through the no rights zone, AKA the border.

Everything accelerates, and if it isn't yet "widespread," it will be. It's certainly being done more than zero times.

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

#515

Post by g0lden »

danbruc wrote: post #156
bradleyjg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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…

All i can say to your heayed comment is that it is a good thing that you're not in a position of power to act in such a way that would sever the worlds ties with the US.

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

#517

Post by jMyles »

mhurron wrote: post #14
wyck wrote: post #5

Is that an official document with an actual smiley face? What ever happened to the admins / programmers standing up for what is right, or do they just gobble down a paycheck and turn the other way?

>Is that an official document with an actual smiley face? It's only HN that pretends there is no feeling in professional work.

It's the "professional" designation that's the problem. Once you say someone is a "professional," that means that they are part of a "profession," and that they answer to the ethical standards of that profession.

Sadly, we have doctors force-feeding people at Gitmo, so it's not terribly surprising that there are counter-professionals at the NSA.

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

#518

Post by bennyg »

malandrew wrote: post #504
waterlesscloud wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Sorry. The President does bear full responsibility. That's the nature of the job. If he wants to claim he wasn't aware, OK. But he is now and it's his responsibility to fix it. Again, that's the nature of the job. If the President wanted to eliminate these programs, they'd get eliminated. It would require the exercise of political will, but it absolutely could be done. The problem, actually, is right here, when p…

This. I secretly harbor this fantasy that the next Edward Snowden will be a future American president. They do everything right, cross all the t's, dot all the i's, the perfect politician, then after their first 100 days in office, they come out and publicly address all the ways that the US is hypocritical and could be the model World citizen it pretends to be. At the end of the day, the presidency is the only positi…

He/she would be impeached under the espionage act.

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

#519

Post by spin »

obstacle1 wrote: post #296
MrZongle2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should, but it probably won't. But the smiley is particularly infuriating, because it embodies the mindset behind this domestic spying: "we're better than you, we're smarter than you, and you can't do a damn thing about it, peons ."

>"we're better than you, we're smarter than you, and you can't do a damn thing about it, peons." What if that is actually true? I know it's a repulsive angle to think about, but is it possible? Maybe we've hit on a fundamental flaw in democracy and democratic-like political systems here. Maybe Plato was more correct than we'd like to think.

Personally, I don't read that much into it. I see it as: some geek is proud of this technical accomplishment (in an a-moral way). Perhaps he/she even gets a kick about "getting away with something naughty"...

(I do find it sickeningly arrogant, though.)

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

#520

Post by xyfer »

Everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about this and the media has painted a picture of criminal undertaking by the NSA. A lot of this is just speculation that has been blown out of proportion. The only way the NSA could compromise private data centers without placing moles in their respective ops teams, is to sniff the traffic on the private DC to DC lines leased by the companies. Assuming they did this by overpowering the ISPs, they are still left with a ton of TCP/UDP packets which they need to reconstruct, decipher and schematize. Although DC to DC traffic is typically not encrypted, it is often compressed or transmitted as binary streams. There is absolutely no way they NSA would be able to make sense of the data without reverse engineering the innumerable communication protocols used and then using that protocol to decipher the packets. It is a lot more feasible to force a company to hand over data on specific users than it is to piece together user data using this packet sniffing technique. If the NSA really is wiretapping DC-DC communication, it's not because they are trying to build profiles on individuals. It's likely that they are using this raw data for keyword lookups. And, although I question its effectiveness, that is a level of surveillance I'm comfortable with.
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