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Does anyone else have the suspicion that Prism was named prism because instead of getting companies to co-operate with the program they were siphoning off data
by tomschlick 11y ago
Does anyone else have the suspicion that Prism was named prism because instead of getting companies to co-operate with the program they were siphoning off data like they did to google by tapping their fiber lines?
That would fit more in line with what we have heard about the tapping stations/rooms at AT&T/Verizon over the years.
I mean if they were really involved with back dooring the individual servers of google/apple/facebook that would involve hundreds of employees at each company to make that happen. Someone would have spoken out by now with some evidence to prove it.
To my knowledge that hasn't happened. Just this shitty looking powerpoint outlining when the data was starting to come in...
- bduerst 11y agoWouldn't HTTPs prevent that?
- tomschlick 11y agoYes, but according to google they were tapping the "dark fiber" (private lines only carrying google traffic) that were not encrypted between their data centers. Those lines were for things like data replication so it was a goldmine for the NSA to tap. Those transmissions have since been encrypted.
- yRetsyM 11y agoNot entirely, though Google and subsequently Microsoft, Apple et all have upgraded inter-datacentre connectivity to be encrypted - reducing this attack vector.
- mikeash 11y agoI recall that being a common interpretation of the name when the news of PRISM first broke, so you're certainly not alone in that.
- dippyskoodlez 11y agoOne does not simply tap fiber. Especially at the composite level of transport links. The systems don't work that way.