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NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

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

#131
Can anybody trust Google services anymore? It seems like it's pretty much a no-go at this point. Even if Google hands over select data from within their systems, it appears we cannot even trust that it makes it that far without being compromised.

Every business that can should be ditching their Google services right now.

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

#133
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What matters is that large cloud systems are fundamentally incapable of protecting data. I don't believe that's true. 1. Google (and others?) is already aggressively increasing the amount of encryption it does on traffic between its datacenters. So they have been addressing this problem before it was even brought to light. 2. We easily have the encryption abilities to do many more things than we do with secure clou…

>In theory, fully homomorphic encryption could allow the best of both worlds above. I completely encrypt my data on my machine --- nobody else has the key --- then send it into the cloud where cloud companies can do operations for me like searching, sorting, filtering, etc, all without ever decrypting the data or learning what it is. Can you explain this to me? I don't understand how you can search encrypted data.

It's mind-boggling, but possible. Here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

The idea is this: I encrypt my data and give it to the cloud. I also encrypt the algorithm I want the cloud to use. In this case, it could be a search algorithm with the search query hardcoded. Right now, it would have to be encoded as a circuit and then encrpyted from there into a different circuit.

The cloud runs my encrypted data through this "transformed" circuit, yielding some encrypted output. The cloud tells me the output. I then decrypt it with my original key.

It's crazy that this works (longstanding open problem solved in 2005 or 06 I think). The name "homomorphic" comes from functions f, like homomorphisms, in which "order doesn't matter":

    f(data) = f(Decrypt(Encrypt(data))) = Decrypt(f(Encrypt(data))).
Hope that makes some sense.

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

#135
post #95

Why didn't they release these documents a long time ago when everyone was racing to judgement that Google, Yahoo, et al were secretly in cahoots with the NSA helping to build drag-net surveillance extranet stuff for them? These are very important revelations! I mean, when Greenwald/Snowden/Guardian released the original PRISM accusations, these slides would have provided a much much more important set of evidence, in…

We're still talking about Snowden. This is the reason.

At this point I suspect Snowden has become a bit of an Emmanuel Goldstein. Any leakers who want to get their stuff out with some modicum of safety just need to get it to one of the usual suspects in the media, if the latter are willing to play the game (this does violate normal journalist ethics, then again this is not a normal situation). The leak can then be ascribed to "Snowden".

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

#136

Can anybody trust Google services anymore? It seems like it's pretty much a no-go at this point. Even if Google hands over select data from within their systems, it appears we cannot even trust that it makes it that far without being compromised. Every business that can should be ditching their Google services right now.

For what, the magical service that can't compromised by the NSA if it wants? At least Google has more resources to throw at the problem than a lot of other companies -- but really you can't trust anyone.

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

#137
post #79

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.

I bet if ESPN and shows like American Idol, etc. were knocked offline until we got our government back on track things would get done pretty fast.

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

#138

If that graphic - that taunting smiley face, drawn when it was assumed that no one was watching - isn't enough to outrage the general public, I don't know what it will take. This is not super technical - it's easily explained and should be easily understood by the masses. And it should cause outrage.

Where you see a taunting smiley, I see a developer who's just happy to have made a breakthrough on his project.

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

#139

People will no doubt come on this thread and remind everyone that of course the government always had access - you must have been a fool not to think so. But I just can not get over how angry it makes me. Honestly I thought that using google products with some exploitation of the contents for advertising was an acceptable exchange. This is just a total betrayal and I cannot believe that the Google board is not aware…

This might be a good time to go back and look at what you said to all those cypherpunks who kept talking about the need to build security into Internet protocols from day 1. Whitefield Diffie had pointed out this problem -- that online services could violate user privacy without any technical barriers -- in the 1970s and pointed to it to motivate public key cryptography. Throughout the 90s and 00s people were saying…

Very good point; very well made. Thank you, good sir.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So does this suggest that Google's SSL encryption can be removed just as easily as that smiley face implies? Well, yes, if you are Google. The removal of SSL is done by Google's own front end servers at the boundary between the public internet and Google's own network, and Google's own network (including its private datacenter-to-datacenter fiber connections) are apparently not encrypted (which saves compute overhe…

Tell me if I understand this right: Google thought it was okay to not encrypt that 'internal' traffic, because even when trans-continental, that traffic was on 'private' Google fiber carrying only Google traffic, not the public internet. It was theoretically on a network that only Google had access to. That's why it seemed okay not to encrypt it, right? (Otherwise, I don't know why Google would have thought it didn't…

Essentially, that is what the article seems to indicate, except that it was Britain's GCHQ, not the US's NSA, that did the tapping. The GCHQ, as part of the "Five Eyes" intelligence cooperation [1], lets the NSA do searches against the data they get from the taps.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Community

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