Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 614 posts

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

#151

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

More to the point of the article here, the government takes the position that their agents are completely unconstrianed by law when it comes to using information shared by foreign intelligence services that their agents had no part in collecting, and the collection here is done by the GCHQ -- a British intelligence agency -- who simply provides NSA the privilege of submitting search terms and getting matching data from the collection GCHQ does from their taps.

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

#153

Post by kamjam »

devx wrote: post #24
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…

I'm hoping Google ends up buying the ECC patents from Blackberry and then make them public domain or at least say they will allow everyone to use them for free and with no consequences. I know they want to buy some stuff from Blackberry right now, but not sure if they are considering buying the ECC patents, too, or not. I'd feel a lot better if Google bought them than say Microsoft or some other company, who'd just t…

I don't trust Google more than anyone else out there. They are in the business of making money and don't much of a damn about their users. The only reason the NSA spying is a problem for them (imo) is that it may affect their bottom line due to user concerns and therefore affect their products. NSA has direct line to Google Cloud, guess I'm better hosting my own servers rather than pay for business Google Mail and Drive. I'm not sure Google would give it away for free, they now own Motorola remember, in the fight against all the phone giants, patents are king!

The 2nd part makes no sense at all. Why would Google not want to know everything about you. That just goes completely against their business model. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

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

#154

Post by jcromartie »

krapp wrote: post #136
jcromartie wrote: post #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.

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 .

> you can't trust anyone

That's become quite apparent. I just wonder if there's any solution, or if it's a mathematical certainty that communications are insecure.

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

#156

Post by danbruc »

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 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 good - I would just cut all cables to the US, stop all trades of oil, raw material and goods, deny US citizens to enter any foreign country and then just do your shit over there and get happy with it.

EDIT: Just to clarify it a bit more, I am not primarily angry because of the spying - read my mails if it makes you happy. What really pisses me of is this sentiment of thinking of non-US citizens as second class humans. We are not spying at US citizens, only at this other guys across the ocean. And sadly this sentiment is also present in part of the media coverage. Especially when the story broke there was a lot of outrage about (accidentally) spying at US citizens, but spying at non-US citizens and breaking foreign law in peacetime is deemed acceptable.

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

#157

Post by spdy »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #91
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…

> actions taken abroad aimed at non-US persons. And there is an interesting counterpoint to that, e.g. > "If the Americans eavesdropped on cellphones in Germany, they broke German law on German soil, and those responsible must be held accountable." http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/10/28/world/obama-unaw...

They did not break German Law. Germany still has past WWII contracts with the Allied Nations in certain areas.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=ht...

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

#158

Post by orblivion »

cromwellian wrote: post #86

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…

Here's an argument: assuming the worst suspicions, Google and the others are complicit in PRISM, so they deserve our scrutiny here. If this one were dumped at the same time, since Google was blindsided by this, people might forget to scrutinize Google for a while.

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

#159

Post by atonse »

thyrsus wrote: post #69
atonse wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't think it's that easy. If the NSA wanted your data, they could get into your network probably easier than they could get into Google's networks. Companies like Google have way smarter people (and working full time) securing data than most businesses. For us to secure our networks as much as someone like Google would, we'd have to have a team of the best hackers around. And by definition, the best hackers…

Not exactly. Think of this analogy: the NSA built an enormously expensive sieve net to fish the entire Pacific Ocean (Google). While the Pacific may be deeper and wider than your innocuous little lagoon, that lagoon probably hasn't attracted the attention of the NSA. If you think the attention of the NSA is going to be a problem for your dealings, hiring very expensive security talent is necessary to your business pl…

Sure, but in that cat and mouse game between Google and the NSA, Google might actually have a chance. From what tptacek has said above about the kind of stuff Google's been doing (SSL with EC and perfect forward secrecy, etc), they're actually able to make it difficult for the NSA.

Plus, in the world of "I can sift through terabytes of data in seconds" even a little lagoon isn't too little.

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

#160

Post by sukuriant »

w_t_payne wrote: post #112
mkr-hn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google might have an easier time recruiting edge producing developers than the NSA after the leaks.

I used to work in the antivirus industry, and, as I recall, anything that even hinted at a history of hacking or virus-writing would lead to instant dismissal and black-listing (from pretty much the entire computer security industry). I imagine that the same prohibition would now apply to former government employees also. The sad fact of the matter is that we cannot trust individuals that have ever worked with these…

Why would the anti-virus industry refuse to hire people that had developed viruses? Aren't those the people that think like virus writers and could write better antivirus software? Same with the hacking half of that. Those are the people that best know how to secure systems.

Wouldn't it be the people that used to be blackhat and have transitioned to gray or white-hat hacking that would be the best people to provide their services for pen-testing/anti-virus writing/etc?

Is the probability of an so-called ex-virus-writer writing in exploits into the system higher than someone else?

Is their knowledge worth the chance?

Post reply on HN