XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' • Hacker News Board

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#421

Post by smacktoward » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

kazagistar wrote: post #305

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all: keep the staggering to a minimum. Second: realizing that "we should have known" and "none of this is new" isn't so much about reading news articles and being "plugged in", but rather having an understanding of how the Internet works. To oversimplify greatly, you're essentially playing a very precise game of telephone between around 10-20 different people, and usually about 1-3 different publicly-owned c…

Maybe I am just having trouble seeing the point of "see I was right all along"? Why would we be upset at the newcomers to the ranks of the enlightened? I would prefer to just nod, point to the preexisting evidence, instead of driving people away with unproductive "I told you so" hostility.

I agree with you 110%.

That being said, I can also imagine how frustrating it must be to be a person who's spent years (maybe decades) worrying about something that's really happening, only to have their concerns dismissed with a wave of the hand or marginalized as "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theories. It's not hard to imagine how that could sour the disposition of even the sunniest person.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#422

Post by morpher » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

qwertzlcoatl wrote: post #214

nikcub wrote: post #29

This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront of you with screenshots and the capabilities described. I can see how they get HTTP information, since they would intercept at transit hubs - but how are they getting all Facebook private messages and Gmail? I was also looking for another unique ID that users ar…

> I was also looking for another unique ID that users are identified by They can use plugins / extensions installed. Fonts installed. If cookies are enabled or not, etc. Check out: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Most of the identifying information used by panopticlick requires using javascript/flash/java to obtain. As such, it isn't available when simply parsing HTTP headers and packets (as much of the data in XKeyScore appears to come from).

(That is, unless you visit panopticlick.eff.org, which then sends all of the processed information over the wire in the clear...)

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#423

Post by VerilyForsooth » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

arca_vorago wrote: post #66

Lurkers first post here. I always said saying "I told you so." when stuff like this started getting revealed would feel like a hollow phrase. Some of us have spent quite a bit of time talking about these issues, and were mostly rejected as crackpot "conspiracy theorists". While there are plenty of those around, maybe I could use this slight moment of pseudo-clarity to propose something. I could tell you where this is…

The cult of conspiracy theory is a cancer which is spreading thoughtout the internet. The symptoms are braindead discourse and the strangulation of logic and sense. Your post is typical. Chemo needed.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#424

Post by kepano » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:17 PM UTC

Can someone with data center expertise extrapolate the physical scale of this operation? In terms of storage and computing power it must rival if not surpass what Google has built, no?

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#425

Post by rhizome » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:17 PM UTC

graycat wrote: post #342

deveac wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront of you with screenshots and the capabilities described. It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I'm a practically addicted news j…

From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc. Then back at HQ, can send the node what are essentially 'filters' to return 'alerts' and the associated content. So, point: As a system, it's quite obvious. As software, it's quite routine. And, fr…

From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc.

See? No "direct access!" Google/FB/Apple's statements, totally reassuring.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#426

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:18 PM UTC

eterm wrote: post #366

mattbarrie wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers seem way off and too keystone cop to be true. 20 terabytes is not large for the NSA. It can search BCC?? Only the sender has them. so everything would have to be collected at each ISP (which isn't impossible).. but I think the guardian has been trolled.

That's 20TB per site. Who knows how many collection sites they have?

Says in the full slides on guardian over 500 sites (this was 2008), I wonder how many they have now..

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#427

Post by VerilyForsooth » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:18 PM UTC

arca_vorago wrote: post #238

krelian wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they believe their theories to be 99% certain instead of the most probable 1%. "I told you so" goes both ways except that conspiracy theorists never accept and admit it, there will always be another conspiracy to cover the current one. In the overall game it simply makes much more mathematical sense to treat conspiracy theorists as crackpots since they will so often get i…

Negative. The problem with conspiracy theorists, or any group for that matter, is that they are so easily put into that group and then dismissed as a whole. Personally I think at the core of the matter is an enormous imbalance of importance placed on the authority or source of an argument, to the detriment of argumentative logos. Possibly some form of the genetic fallacy. For example, you deride an entire "group" of…

You are a conspiracy theorist. By definition, your powers of cognitive thinking are essentially retarded. This is what defines the conspiracy theorist.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#428

Post by legutierr » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

antimatter wrote: post #391

api wrote: post #376

I'm getting seriously irritated at the "I have nothing to hide" crowd. For starters, here are a few ways this can go horribly wrong: * Industrial espionage -- it's big business, and I'm sure it pays better than being an NSA analyst. * Foreign espionage -- since this gives unlimited querying power to every agent, a single "turned" agent could inflict massive damage on U.S. government and industry interests on behalf o…

This. I can't seem to make people around me understand this point.

Do you list these negatives when having that conversation? Do they not see the possibility of something like this being used against them or family members when you lay out the possibilities specifically (blackmail and industrial espionage could hit anybody)?

The "nothing to hide" trope seems to me to be entirely based on a false dichotomy that contrasts "nothing to hide" with "unpatriotic/criminal". I think this is primarily because people lack the imagination to consider the other seedier and more lucrative uses of surveillance.

If they were confronted with these other possibilities, would your acquaintances change their thinking? Or do these other risks--for example, the risk of having an employer targeted by competitors unfairly (potentially leading to layoffs), or the risk of having a representative vote against the interests of his or her district because of blackmail (potentially leading to a loss of government services and investment)--simply not resonate?

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#429

Post by computer » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

VerilyForsooth wrote: post #295

Why is the commentry on this topic always braindead? The article states that there is a query interface using the email address as the key. But Where does it say that every single email/webpage from every single person is being collected? Such a task would be technically impossible. It seems far more likely that it's querying a database of pretargeted people. There is so much hysterical nonsense regarding this topic.…

The raw slides are included in the article. You should consider looking at them.

Re: XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

#430

Post by heyitsnick » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

And, according to Greenwald, there's a lot more to come. From the comments:

"There are thousands upon thousands of documents and they take time to read, process, vet, and report. These are very complex matters..... there is a lot more to report still. Accuracy is the number one priority. That takes time."