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As far as I’m aware he didn’t demonstrate that (say) Apple was infested by NSA mass surveillance tools. And those options that could be used to profile users ca

As far as I’m aware he didn’t demonstrate that (say) Apple was infested by NSA mass surveillance tools. And those options that could be used to profile users can be switched off. What am I missing?

benevol 9y ago
> What am I missing? Quite a lot, I'm afraid. Please do read the Snowden leaks, it's extremely important historical data. For starters, all major US tech companies are PRISM partners.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  Based on said leaks and a fact sheet from DNI Clapper himself, PRISM is simply an efficient warrant processing system based upon legal authority, nothing more. While troubling and worthy of debate, particularly regarding its 702 legal authority and targeting of Americans, it does not involve malware, surreptitious access to any of the involved tech companies, or an infestation of NSA tooling. The author of the PRISM slides was not careful to make this clear, which meant without context, everyone seemed to assume PRISM was a Room 641A situation. It's become clear that to be a 'partner' in PRISM simply means that the entity is capable of responding to warrants using the system, and citing PRISM as an example of compromise in the same vein as this Huawei announcement is disingenuous at best. Some companies built systems on their side to help (like Facebook), while Google delivered their PRISM data via SSH, for example; Twitter, interestingly, did not play ball. Having responded to warrants before, I can tell you that it's a drawn out, paperwork-intensive process. Something like PRISM is actually net good for both parties, since governmental relationships are extremely human intensive on both sides at the scale of the large tech players. I can actually understand and sympathize with the USG designing a system to make it more efficient, though the leaks tell us it was flagrantly misused (primarily via NSLs, back door searches, and so on).
- vkou 9y ago
  What do you think PRISM actually accomplished, on a budget of ~$200,000 USD/year? Hint: It wasn't a firehose of compromised user data gathered by 'mass suriveliance tools'. It's budget is missing a few zeroes for that. It was, however, a firehose for serving legal documents.
josh2600 9y ago
Rex, the Qualcomm baseband os, is a binary blob that’s really annoying to reverse engineer and it shares a bus with the top-level os.
- 0x0 9y ago
  I guess that's a +1 for why new iPhones are changing over to Intel LTE chips
  - kakarot 9y ago
    Isn't this still a problem with the new Intel chips? Is the baseband processor actually separate?
- tptacek 9y ago
  No, that's not in fact how basebands work; the baseband is connected to the AP via HSIC, which is an internal USB bus. "Shares a bus with the top-level OS", by the way, is a sequence of words that doesn't really make sense.
  - josh2600 9y ago
    I checked and you're right! I misunderstood a series of articles from 5 years ago on this subject. Please excuse my confusion :(. Edit: Also Rex is the kernel and RtOS is the OS. http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...
johnflan 9y ago
What about talk of being able to turn on any phone microphone etc
- Angostura 9y ago
  What about talk of unicorns?
TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
https://leaksource.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/nsa-ant-dropoutjeep.jpg https://leaksource.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/nsa-ant-dropo... Also: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/apple-vpn-restrictions-china/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/apple-vpn-restrictions-c... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/02/apple_and_amazon_are_helping_china_censor_the_internet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/02/apple_and... http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/apple-ceo-cook-china-vpn-apps/ http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/apple-ceo-cook-china-vpn-apps/ > “We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business,” Cook said on a call with analysts to discuss quarterly financial results. If Apple wants to remain competitive globally from a market share perspective, they need to compete in China (http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/china http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/china). If the only way to do that is remove apps from the app store, they'll do it. In fact, the app store is probably the most noticeable change. There could be others that haven't been widely publicized.

benevol 9y ago

> What am I missing? Quite a lot, I'm afraid. Please do read the Snowden leaks, it's extremely important historical data. For starters, all major US tech companies are PRISM partners.

jsmthrowaway 9y ago
Based on said leaks and a fact sheet from DNI Clapper himself, PRISM is simply an efficient warrant processing system based upon legal authority, nothing more. While troubling and worthy of debate, particularly regarding its 702 legal authority and targeting of Americans, it does not involve malware, surreptitious access to any of the involved tech companies, or an infestation of NSA tooling. The author of the PRISM slides was not careful to make this clear, which meant without context, everyone seemed to assume PRISM was a Room 641A situation. It's become clear that to be a 'partner' in PRISM simply means that the entity is capable of responding to warrants using the system, and citing PRISM as an example of compromise in the same vein as this Huawei announcement is disingenuous at best. Some companies built systems on their side to help (like Facebook), while Google delivered their PRISM data via SSH, for example; Twitter, interestingly, did not play ball. Having responded to warrants before, I can tell you that it's a drawn out, paperwork-intensive process. Something like PRISM is actually net good for both parties, since governmental relationships are extremely human intensive on both sides at the scale of the large tech players. I can actually understand and sympathize with the USG designing a system to make it more efficient, though the leaks tell us it was flagrantly misused (primarily via NSLs, back door searches, and so on).
vkou 9y ago
What do you think PRISM actually accomplished, on a budget of ~$200,000 USD/year? Hint: It wasn't a firehose of compromised user data gathered by 'mass suriveliance tools'. It's budget is missing a few zeroes for that. It was, however, a firehose for serving legal documents.

josh2600 9y ago

Rex, the Qualcomm baseband os, is a binary blob that’s really annoying to reverse engineer and it shares a bus with the top-level os.

0x0 9y ago
I guess that's a +1 for why new iPhones are changing over to Intel LTE chips
- kakarot 9y ago
  Isn't this still a problem with the new Intel chips? Is the baseband processor actually separate?
tptacek 9y ago
No, that's not in fact how basebands work; the baseband is connected to the AP via HSIC, which is an internal USB bus. "Shares a bus with the top-level OS", by the way, is a sequence of words that doesn't really make sense.
- josh2600 9y ago
  I checked and you're right! I misunderstood a series of articles from 5 years ago on this subject. Please excuse my confusion :(. Edit: Also Rex is the kernel and RtOS is the OS. http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...

johnflan 9y ago

What about talk of being able to turn on any phone microphone etc

Angostura 9y ago
What about talk of unicorns?

TYPE_FASTER 9y ago

https://leaksource.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/nsa-ant-dropoutjeep.jpg https://leaksource.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/nsa-ant-dropo... Also: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/apple-vpn-restrictions-china/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/apple-vpn-restrictions-c... http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/02/apple_and_amazon_are_helping_china_censor_the_internet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/02/apple_and... http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/apple-ceo-cook-china-vpn-apps/ http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/apple-ceo-cook-china-vpn-apps/ > “We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business,” Cook said on a call with analysts to discuss quarterly financial results. If Apple wants to remain competitive globally from a market share perspective, they need to compete in China (http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/china http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/china). If the only way to do that is remove apps from the app store, they'll do it. In fact, the app store is probably the most noticeable change. There could be others that haven't been widely publicized.