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NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide

washingtonpost.com

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

#551

Post by sseveran »

frenger wrote: post #542
sseveran wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

"Similarly Americans don't enjoy legal protections from the governments of other countries." Yeah right.

What governments are extending me legal protections?

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

#552

Post by sseveran »

serf wrote: post #546
sseveran wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

how about when the government makes you renounce citizenship and waive your right to sue them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Hamdi

They should have just manned up and charged him with treason. That seems like a relatively simple case.

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

#553

Post by cromwellian »

anonymousDan wrote: post #403
cromwellian wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you aware of any vaguely practical systems for a variant of keyword search that just returns whether the keyword was found (e.g. 1 for found, 0 for not found) but with the added requirement that the result must itself be encrypted? I suspect it degenerates to fully homomorphic encryption though.

By result itself, you mean the boolean 1/0 about whether it was found? Yes, I am aware of one I saw some time ago that had additional guarantees, I don't know how practical it was though, but it'll take some searching to find.

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

#554

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #399
ori_b wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was letting information flow between its data center completely unencrypted until last month. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-enc... . Last month! Over their own private WAN. The analogy would be sending things in the clear over your LAN. [Citation: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/google-onrc-slide... ]

Do not trust that your internal networks are secure. Any links carrying business or customer data should be encrypted. I remember over a decade ago talking with the security head of a university where I was working, about a new system design. I made some comment like "well this is all on the machine room network" and his response was "I wouldn't trust the machine room network." Pretty eye-opening since he was the per…

[deleted]

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

#555

Post by acqq »

bo1024 wrote: post #501
acqq wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impractical is in sense "nobody can actually it, only the papers are written about it." Practically impossible to use.

A lot of things that were practically impossible 50 (or even 5) years ago are commonplace today.

That doesn't change the fact that nobody today can use homomorphic encryption, contrary to your claim.

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

#556

Post by mattlutze »

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…

I'm torn between the two sides of this coin.

As both a US citizen and world citizen (how can we who've grown up in the Internet age not feel a little more worldly?) it feels violating to know this has been going on, and that it likely effects me.

On the other side, it has forever been, and continues to be, in a physical-boundary-defined nation's best interest to know things about every other nation, in order to compete within international relationships. I would be surprised to find a major international player that didn't have a clandestine agent group or groups like the CIA or NSA.

It's a very tough and frustrating topic. Spying always feels disrespectful and arrogant to the spied upon. But should we implicitly assert that this isn't done by the rest[0] of the intelligence agencies around the world?

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

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

#557

Post by madaxe »

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…

Sorry, that's the funniest thing I've read all week.

An American president with a moral backbone?

Give me a break.

That's like expecting it to rain candyfloss.

The presidency is a hollow man, a figurehead - it's all just a show to make you think you have a democracy. The tail wags the dog, and entrenched non-elected interests run the show, through corruption, lobbying (corruption), and special interests (corruption).

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

#558

Post by madaxe »

allochthon wrote: post #206
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…

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…

Yeah, but US citizens vote for their government, so are therefore accountable. I don't see you out in the streets with pitchforks, so you're as culpable as the primary perpetrators.

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

#559

Post by madaxe »

jganetsk wrote: post #320
devx wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, not only do a lot of US citizens still support such practices (I think around 40 percent - as long as they mention "to protect you from terrorists"), but most of the rest who don't agree with the practices, can't be bothered to do much about it, like even calling their representative, let alone going out and protesting. I do believe this is very true: > All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for…

People are not going to start hating Americans. They have already been hating Americans for hundreds of years. It started with the "degeneracy thesis" in the 18th century, where it had been suggested by European intellectuals that the American climate led to physically inferior animals and humans. The reasons for hating Americans change everyday. Hating a group of people is a completely irrational, unconstructive app…

Yes, you're right, it's racist to oppose NSA spycraft.

> They can start by asking nicely.

"Can you please kindly, stop perpetuating your morally bankrupt spy-state?"

Gosh. That achieved a lot.

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

#560

Post by madaxe »

selmnoo wrote: post #180
cromwellian wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but as collateral damage, the rope hung the tech companies and damaged their brands by who knows how much.

They deserve to have their brands damaged. They didn't do their due diligence in encrypting data going through leased fibers -- they should have had the foresight to realize what a phenomenally bad thing this was. They didn't, hence why I'll never trust them again.

They also gave the NSA and co. front-door access, and probably knew about the back-door access, but couldn't do anything about it.
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