NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by cromwellian » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #158

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.

There's a difference between assuming the worst, and having evidence on your desk that refutes your own assumptions.

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

#182

Post by brown9-2 » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #60

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 far beyond special investigator time. Obama should be impeached. Both Obama and Bush should be tried for criminal conduct. Both should be put in prison for decades for treason. Of course on top of that are the war crimes and general crimes against humanity both committed (torture, war, murder of thousands of civilians, and so on).

By the same reasoning you should impeach the majority of Congress (the same people who would vote for such an impeachment of the President).

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

#183

Post by Sae5waip » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

spdy wrote: post #157

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

One should add: secret contracts (laws, for germans), that the population isn't being allowed to know about.

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

#184

Post by a3n » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #151

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…

> 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 colle…

And yet we civilians are still liable for receiving stolen goods.

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

#185

Post by brown9-2 » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:50 PM UTC

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…

Imagine you come into possession of tens of thousands of documents covering material and terminology that you barely understand. That is going to take months to work through, even before you consider that you would want to keep access to the documents/information limited to a small group of people that could help you work through it.

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

#186

Post by cromwellian » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

BillyMaize wrote: post #96

bo1024 wrote: 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.

You don't need full homomorphic encryption to do encrypted search, look up PKES systems, there's tons of papers on it now (http://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/abstracts/encsearch.html). It's possible to encrypted keyword search with trapdoor functions in such a way that the server can't learn anything about what you're searching on, nor what is stored.

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

#187

Post by unreal37 » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #80

dlinder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your opponent uses Navy submarines to tap undersea cables right under the Soviets' noses, you probably shouldn't trust your leased fiber with unencrypted data. This interception could occur where undersea cables make landfall without any datacenter antics.

I've seen no indication that Google considers the NSA any sort of opponent.

With governments around the world (see Brazil and India) now banning Google products for official government use, I can imagine overall usage of Google products will decline outside of the U.S.

This is a threat to Google's international business. They have a vested financial interest in reducing the hacking against their systems.

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

#188

Post by nickmolnar2 » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

The denials over Prism never squared with the size and capability of the system that were outlined in the documents, unless I'm missing something here. Is it not possible that the court-ordered data releases were just one small part of the Prism program, with MUSCULAR and others filling the data that could not be obtained through the legal system? Prism is just the query interface, which is not necessarily tied to one dataset.

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

#189

Post by brown9-2 » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:53 PM UTC

dombili wrote: post #29

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?

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 massive surveillance apparatus is being used in a widespread way to abusively target Americans.

Being able to intercept online communication between terrorists and foreign governments in a way that collects zero communications of Americans seems like a really, really hard task.

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

#190

Post by GuerraEarth » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 6:53 PM UTC

Google is so good. Such a great concept. So much fun to use. A romper room. Such a bastion of talent and good people. Which is why this whole business is such a crappy disappointment. A guy sitting in a renovated girl's bathroom in London told us some time back that this was the case, that Google had dropped its original stance against "evil," but nobody took him seriously.