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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#61

Post by mark_l_watson »

XorNot wrote: post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

I liked the effect. I am on a MBA running Safari and the scrolling with revealed photos worked great. I thought it was a good effect and helped tell a good story. Later, I will try reading the article on my smartphone to see how it is on mobile.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#62

Post by crunchcaptain »

elwell wrote: post #42

> One day an intelligence officer told him that TAO—a division of NSA hackers—had attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead—render…

It's very interesting that TAO attempted to remotely compromise a core router. What happened to diverting Cisco boxes to an "undisclosed location" for installing implants?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#63

Post by cpwright »

jobu wrote: post #54
adityab wrote: post #18

Two key 'new' things from this article, that were previously unknown: 1. The NSA exploited the firmware of a Syrian core internet router, and bricked it by mistake. This was an "oh shit" moment (sic). So in it's eagerness to scoop up all digital communications, it killed the majormost way for citizens to communicate while in the midst of a civil war. Great. 2. There is a project called "MonsterMind", which 100% autom…

Another interesting item I hadn't heard before is that Snowden tried to leave clues as to which files he copied, and which files he looked at but didn't take: But he believes the NSA's audit missed those clues and simply reported the total number of documents he touched—1.7 million. (Snowden says he actually took far fewer.) “I figured they would have a hard time,” he says. “I didn't figure they would be completely i…

His statement presumes it would be in the agencies interest to publicly minimize what he took rather than publicly maximize it.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#64

Post by cpwright »

toyg wrote: post #37
Hacker37 wrote: post #14

I am not sure what part of the story was not already told.

TAO bricking the Syrian main router and MonsterMind implementing a sort of cyber-MAD system, are explicitly called out as exclusive revelations. They are important because: * Until now, any loss of Internet connectivity in Syria has always been interpreted as "bad dictator censoring people". I'm not saying that's never been the case, but now we know the US can have more control on global internet infrastructure than…

> if Poitras really lawyered up when asked, chances are that there's something else as well).

Or it is in her (and Snowden's) interest to not say exactly what came from where. If there is a second leaker, confirming it could create or increase the intensity of a witch hunt. If there is not, it would confirm that Snowden may have took more material than he claims.

Either way, there is no benefit to her answering either in the affirmative or negative.

There is also no benefit to answering herself, as she's likely already retained the lawyer because of handling this sensitive material.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#65

Post by Noctem »

a3n wrote: post #30
happyscrappy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the seriousness is kind of lost with banner ads for Cheetos.

AdBlock Edge. When I first installed it, my motivation was partly to fuck with The Man. But good lord what a great web experience I've had since then. It's almost a completely different web, with a completely different purpose, to inform me rather than to sell me.

I don't understand Adblock Edge. Why use a fork of an old version of Adblock Plus with "acceptable ads" disabled instead of just disabling them yourself in the original (and continuously updated) product?

Are there any changes besides the preconfigured disabling of Adblock's whitelist?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#66

Post by hughw »

XorNot wrote: post #3

So there's a bigger story here: good lord is the web-design here irritating. They've overridden scroll events so they at best don't work properly. Scrolling on a laptop gives you a weird non-mapping slide animation. This is seriously one of the most unreadable articles, from a design sense, that I've ever seen.

I hated it at first. Then I got used to it, and I liked it.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#67

Post by ghshephard »

normloman wrote: post #16

What the hell. I start scrolling with my mouse wheel, but nothing moves. I'm thinking my mouse must be broken, until 30 seconds later, I notice the "cover image" fade in and out. I swear, crappy flash intros are alive and well. They just don't use flash anymore.

I couldn't read it on my MacBook Air 2013 + Chrome. Decided to just come here and read the comments instead.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#68

Post by chatmasta »

belorn wrote: post #47

A division of NSA hackers attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead, which caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internet. So in middle of a war zone, US conducted sabotage to core infrastructure of an other nation,…

> In middle of a war zone

> In peacetime

So which is it? There was (is) a war raging in Syria, the US has interests there -- like it or not -- and the NSA is a US intelligence agency. This story sounds like an example of the NSA just doing its job.

I have no problem with the NSA spying on foreign communications or disrupting them. After all, that's their job. What else would we use the NSA for?

What I do have a problem with is that the NSA makes apparently zero effort to disambiguate between foreign, and domestic, communications.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#69

Post by yardie »

nabla9 wrote: post #36
tokenadult wrote: post #15

I read through all the comments here before beginning to read the article. The comments that say that the usability of the article format is very bad are correct. The online format is too cute by half, and impairs readability. But the article is well worth reading. As Danso points out, the journalist who did the reporting on this article is a renowned independent investigative reporter, James Bamford, who has broken…

NSA started to move towards "two-man rule" system where system administrators work in pairs when accessing servers with highly classified information only after Snowden leaks. When you know that Russia and China have good track record of long running human intelligence operations in the US, this looks like really gigantic security lapse. They are not stupid and they must have been discussing it. There must have been…

> The cost of setting up good HUMINT must be fraction of the cost of the NSA infrastructure.

Considering the fact that the US was completely caught off guard by the scope and effectiveness of ISIS I have to question the effectiveness of SIGINT programs like the NSA. I have to assume honestly that these programs outlandish budgets are not for tracking terrorists but to control the domestic populace.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#70

Post by yardie »

cpwright wrote: post #63
jobu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting item I hadn't heard before is that Snowden tried to leave clues as to which files he copied, and which files he looked at but didn't take: But he believes the NSA's audit missed those clues and simply reported the total number of documents he touched—1.7 million. (Snowden says he actually took far fewer.) “I figured they would have a hard time,” he says. “I didn't figure they would be completely i…

His statement presumes it would be in the agencies interest to publicly minimize what he took rather than publicly maximize it.

You minimise the damage reported to keep your job. You maximise the damage reported to get the bosses job.

Geeks have been doing this for yours; i.e.. "the security breach was minimal" vs. "you should hire me, your security are ineffective."

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