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

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

#521

Post by guiambros » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:29 AM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #156

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…

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…

That's why, ironically, the best hope for privacy-minded US citizens (like a good part of HN readers) comes from outside governments.

People like Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, that had the courage to cancel state visits and declaring outraged by the state-sponsored spying supported by the Obama Administration.

We need many more governments standing up and threatening to cut commercial ties with the US, until we can see some traction.

Sadly, I'm not very hopeful that this will happen, given the commercial interests involved. Mexico had a slow initial response, but it's starting to demonstrate some reaction. Germany and France are my hopes [1].

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/mexico-presiden...

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

#522

Post by unclebucknasty » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:35 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #504

waterlesscloud wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Sorry. The President does bear full responsibility. That's the nature of the job. If he wants to claim he wasn't aware, OK. But he is now and it's his responsibility to fix it. Again, that's the nature of the job. If the President wanted to eliminate these programs, they'd get eliminated. It would require the exercise of political will, but it absolutely could be done. The problem, actually, is right here, when p…

This. I secretly harbor this fantasy that the next Edward Snowden will be a future American president. They do everything right, cross all the t's, dot all the i's, the perfect politician, then after their first 100 days in office, they come out and publicly address all the ways that the US is hypocritical and could be the model World citizen it pretends to be. At the end of the day, the presidency is the only positi…

>the presidency is the only position that is beyond the reproach of anyone behind the scenes that may be using their powers to pull strings. If he has ever been coerced by hidden powers, he alone could unveil them...

If there were such hidden powers as to pull strings or coerce the president, I am not sure why we should believe that they didn't have a hand in his rise to power.

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

#523

Post by BrandonMarc » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

a3n wrote: post #503

bilbo0s wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not being clear. My assertion is that trust has broken down. And therefore the ability to validate has broken down. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the President and the Congress eliminate these programs... How would you or I... or any foreign person validate that? How would I, in good faith, tell a foreign person, or even another citizen, that their communications are no longer being monitore…

> Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the President and the Congress eliminate these programs... > How would you or I... or any foreign person validate that? How would the President validate that?

This. Consider: is the NSA snooping on the president? If they were or weren't, would he ever know it for certain?

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

#524

Post by sseveran » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #467

spikels wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree the NSA's conduct is outrageous you seem to be confused about how countries actually work. Every country treats non-citizens worse than citizens - fewer rights and benefits, more limited (if any) work opportunities, additional hassles, etc. And most countries have intelligence agencies that spy on foreign countries and their citizens often in ways that break foreign laws. Don't be so naive.

The problem is not so much about the expected behavior of a spy agency, or how the US government justify itself "But it's only on non-citizens". That's kind of expected, like you explained. The problem is when the medias, the public and politicians are reassuring and reassured by that "But it's only for non-citizens". To a foreigner like me, what I see is that US citizens, medias and politicians are just fine with my…

Correct. You have no legal right to privacy in the US and enjoy none of the legal protections from our government that citizens enjoy (or should). You can be renditioned, spied on and wiretapped with no legal recourse in the US. Similarly Americans don't enjoy legal protections from the governments of other countries.

Now two countries may enter into an agreement not to surveil each other or their citizens. That is completely a different issue. But if you are not a US citizen or don't have a visa than the Constitution affords you no protections.

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

#525

Post by sseveran » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:51 AM UTC

guiambros wrote: post #521

danbruc wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's why, ironically, the best hope for privacy-minded US citizens (like a good part of HN readers) comes from outside governments. People like Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, that had the courage to cancel state visits and declaring outraged by the state-sponsored spying supported by the Obama Administration. We need many more governments standing up and threatening to cut commercial ties with the US, until w…

France and Germany can't. They are both export based economies.

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

#526

Post by Renaud » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 4:58 AM UTC

xyfer wrote: post #520

Everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about this and the media has painted a picture of criminal undertaking by the NSA. A lot of this is just speculation that has been blown out of proportion. The only way the NSA could compromise private data centers without placing moles in their respective ops teams, is to sniff the traffic on the private DC to DC lines leased by the companies. Assuming they did this by overpower…

I think you over-estimate the complexity of the data being exchanged between data centres and underestimate the capabilities of these well-funded agencies that can afford top-notch PhDs, developers, engineers, mathematicians.

The article seems clear on the fact that they are able to reconstruct the data streams. It's not difficult to assume that most of the data-exchange protocols used are pretty standard or at least pretty stable, for instance Google use protobuf[1] for efficient binary exchanges, it's open source and well documented.

Data is meant to be moved efficiently between data-centres and these companies had no reason to add any obfuscation (if that was the case, they would have already used encryption). There is no reason to assume that adversaries with deep pockets would not have the technology or know-how to reverse engineer these unprotected data communication flows.

[1]:https://code.google.com/p/protobuf/

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

#527

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 5:03 AM UTC

jsmeaton wrote: post #386

allochthon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just cut all cables to the US, ... deny US citizens to enter any foreign country and then just do your shit over there and get happy with it. Whoah, there. Your grievances are well-placed. But keep in mind that it's a certain subset of agencies in the US government that are responsible for the problems you're upset about, not all US citizens. As for fixing things, the government has become literally unmanagea…

The US government throws its weight around by ordering sanctions against countries that have policies it does not agree with. I have no doubt that, where sanctions would be politically unpopular, there are back-room blackmailings of some type. That said, instituting similar sanctions against the US should absolutely be the number one thing the rest of the world responds with! It might not be every US citizen that is…

[deleted]

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

#528

Post by icelancer » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 5:08 AM UTC

spikels wrote: post #281

icelancer wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not all US citizens The vast majority of citizens support these initiatives. Given the winner-take-all approach we employ, it is not a stretch to say that yes, we all share blame.

Where did you get the idea the "vast majority of citizens support these initiatives"? From the very start the polls have generally been against mass NSA surveillance except when the wording of the poll was misleading[1]. As more and more information has come out the polls have become more and more clearly against it[2]. Try to keep the facts straight. Not sure why you refer to winner-take-all and how that concept cou…

Now try mentioning terrorism as the tradeoff for granting civil liberties and see what people think.

That's how they view it, for better or worse.

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

#529

Post by sanderjd » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 5:10 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #496

cynix wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the President wanted to eliminate these programs, they'd get eliminated. Just like Guantanamo Bay, right?

Exactly like that. If Obama believed these programs (and Guantanamo Bay) were "wrong" with the same conviction Snowden believes – he'd do what it takes to shut them down, with the same career/livelihood risks that Snowden accepted. It's precisely the sort of moral compromises that Obama has made to allow Guantanamo Bay to stay operating, that have allowed the NSA to grab so much extraordinary power amd avoid any sort…

Honestly, dedicating himself to fixing this problem may be the only way he can save his presidency in the eyes of history at this point. Literally everything he's overseen has been a disaster.

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

#530

Post by e12e » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 5:10 AM UTC

ilyanep wrote: post #358

cs702 wrote: post #208

Wow. Years ago, I remember reading Richard Stallman's "How I do my computing"[1], an essay in which he explains why he usually does not connect to any websites from his own machine, downloads web pages from a headless browser running in some server, does not have any user accounts for any web applications, does not buy anything over the Internet ever, does not use any social networking sites, and otherwise abstains f…

Any amount of paranoid ridiculousness can be justified after the fact by some sort of big incident. It's how we justify the PATRIOT act after 9/11 and how one might justify Stallman's actions after the NSA leaks. That doesn't make it any less ridiculous to go to such radical measures. We could just shut off the Internet entirely and force everyone to walk around naked lest they strap a bomb to themselves.

As for not believing intelligence services attempted to monitor the Internet prior to that story -- that would have been just silly. If they didn't they wouldn't be doing their (illegal) job.