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The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

firstlook.org

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Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#31

Post by dredmorbius »

Twirrim wrote: post #28

I think I'm more surprised that this was a surprise to people. Of course they built a search engine. Wouldn't you? Don't you have similar at your workplace? We use them all the time. Think about web interfaces built on top of ElasticSearch, for example. Is that not a 'search engine'?

It's not the building a search engine part.

It's the opening it up to LEO. Taking homeland security-justified warrantless searches and turning those over to criminal investigations is far beyond unconstitutional.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#32

Post by DigitalSea »

Imagine if hackers were to somehow to find out where this tool is being hosted and then brute force their way in? Presumably such a tool is heavily secured and off the grid, but if it is somehow accessible from the Internet and an attacker were to find out where, it's only a matter of time now that the cat is out of the bag. Could you imagine hackers having access to troves of metadata and information like that? It's a scary thought.

I'm surprised such a thing took so long to be revealed. If you've got as much data as the NSA has, wouldn't you want a Google like search engine to be able to search through it? It makes so much sense which is why I am surprised some people are surprised about this.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#33

Post by Tangokat »

niels_olson wrote: post #27

Is it just me, or is it tragicomical that I can't access firstlook from a government network?

According to the Intercept, the U.S Military has banned employees from visiting First Look because there could be classified information on the site. [1] [2] (extra source since you can't see the real one..)

Maybe that is what you are experiencing?

[1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/20/u-s-military-b...

[2] https://thebulletwire.com/u-s-military-bans-glenn-greenwalds...

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#34

Post by oceanstone »

DigitalSea wrote: post #32

Imagine if hackers were to somehow to find out where this tool is being hosted and then brute force their way in? Presumably such a tool is heavily secured and off the grid, but if it is somehow accessible from the Internet and an attacker were to find out where, it's only a matter of time now that the cat is out of the bag. Could you imagine hackers having access to troves of metadata and information like that? It's…

Furthermore, think of how profitable surveillance on certain individuals could be. Could a military contractor not have a thriving side business funneling out intelligence on innocent American targets? Could multiple people not be hired just to clear tracks and make justifiable excuses for accessing the records?

If Snowden, as one person, accomplished what he did with (the majority of Americans would say) good intentions, imagine what a team of people, who were just as smart if not smarter, could do if they didn't have morals guiding their actions. Imagine how well a team could cover their tracks, dot all the I's, and cross all the T's, compared to just one guy.

This is all common sense, but it bears repeating.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#35

Post by junto »

visarga wrote: post #19
anoothrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience in school (and grad school) was similar, so I've been curious about the same thing. Perhaps, they only recruit folks from the industry after they've worked for a while and have specialized?

Maybe they recruit people while they are employed at FB/GG/Msft/Amz, you know, to help with national security while also receiving a second wage.

I imagine that you'll get downvoted to hell for saying that, but if I was the NSA I'd do exactly this. I'd also threaten you if you refused to comply.

I would already know exactly which employee to target based on your dubious interests gleaned from your internet searches.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#36

Post by motters »

pdkl95 wrote: post #16
eli wrote: post #10

I guess it's always cool to learn about top secret stuff that spies do, but I don't get why the specifics of how their search engine works is significant. Am I just missing something?

This, as with most of Greenwald's work on this subject, has been a slow effort to educate people about a very technical (for the average person) topic. Building on previous reports that showed the type of activity and the threat it can cause, this installment is about establishing the pattern of illegality. If the NSA could justify the time and expense to make a search tool, there must be a lot of searching needs...…

I think that's the key insight. It may not be legal for NSA to look at records of US citizens, but build a search engine and there are other departments for whom it is legal to do that. NSA just becomes the facilitator or router of the data.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#37

Post by BorisMelnik »

I am just not surprised about this at all. They have more information than I could ever imagine, wouldn't any rational person assume there is a search engine to index, sort, parse, and return results?

seems like a lot until you consider how many indexed pages Google has: http://i.imgur.com/EqIJAoL.jpg

why not throw in grains of sand or atoms in the universe?

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#38

Post by fit2rule »

I believe its really telling that, rather than take the tactic of fully promoting open society, the inclination is towards more and more secrecy. Like, dire, utter secrecy. Kill someone-style, secrecy.

Imagine the other end of the scale - where in fact every detail about everyones lives is wide open and available for everyone and anyone to access. Willingly. Freely. A new order of celebrity: total telepathy.

Do you think we'd be dealing with terrorism, then? Would there be the idealist, killing souls, for a little private time?

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#39

Post by Perseids »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #37

I am just not surprised about this at all. They have more information than I could ever imagine, wouldn't any rational person assume there is a search engine to index, sort, parse, and return results? seems like a lot until you consider how many indexed pages Google has: http://i.imgur.com/EqIJAoL.jpg why not throw in grains of sand or atoms in the universe?

Nice comparison, though I hate it when graphics look like they were drawn to scale, but actually aren't. (The Google indexed pages bar would have to be more than 10 times larger.)

More on topic: Whether you can compare the index sizes or not mostly depends on their signal to noise ration. Given the number of Google search request per month and assuming and average of 5 viewed results, you can put a lower bound of 99% of pages that are never seen by anyone. As the search results should greatly overlap the actual number of relevant sites is probably orders of magnitude less than 1%.

Re: The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

#40

Post by higherpurpose »

eyeareque wrote: post #4

People always assumed they did this but now we have proof. I thought it was amazing that the government spent so much time discussing the call records being logged.. when they are doing so much worse. Maybe that's how they keep people focusing on what the government wants to talk about? (aka look over here, nevermind that thing over there...) This find is way worse than call detail records..

It was pretty obvious that's why they were doing it. The FISA Amendments Act is also much worse than the 215 section of the Patriot Act - or the Executive Order 12333, which is even less talked about.

That doesn't mean the call records issue wasn't important. After all, they pick their torture and drone assassination targets based on that alone, in many cases. But considering the Internet is such a big part of everyone's lives these days, I think NSA getting a firehose from the big carriers and cable providers is a bigger deal, yet I've heard very little talk about denying NSA access to the undersea cables.

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