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It's ironic to see a comment like this in a thread on Snowden. It's remarkable how quick we are to forget about things such as PRISM [1]. PRISM is a government-

by rjf72 7y ago

It's ironic to see a comment like this in a thread on Snowden. It's remarkable how quick we are to forget about things such as PRISM [1]. PRISM is a government-corporate surveillance coop. Players include Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many others. Capabilities described in slides never intended for public access indicate unilateral access by the NSA to "extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information" with examples including email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP chats (such as Skype), file transfers, and social networking details. Especially in modern society government and corporate interests are increasingly interweaving. And I'm no more comforted by governments having access to dystopic levels of personal information than I am by corporations having that access. It just so happens that, in practice, there's no difference anyhow. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

vkou 7y ago
PRISM was an internal NSA web-form for sending what was considered (by some, but not tested in courts) to be legal data access requests to US cloud app providers. It was a f---ing web-form for sending targeted, narrowly-scoped, legal notices. Nothing more, nothing less. It was not some magical all-seeing Eye of Sauron that gave the NSA a backdoor into every word you ever said online, your blood type, and the number of nose hairs that you plucked this morning. The really illegal backdoor, unscoped intercepts, including the cable taps, were done without the consent of most (all?) of the companies in question, and were not done through PRISM, but rather through physical access to, say, cross-datacenter cables, straight up hacking, and similar means.[1] [1] See: SSL added and removed here :v) https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-here-nsa-smiley/ https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her...
- rjf72 7y ago
  This is completely incorrect. To start with "IS, not WAS". PRISM hasn't gone anywhere and the most reasonable path here is to expect it's only substantially grown - as it already was doing at the time of its initial reveal. This [1] is a snippet of the PRISM collection overview. Data is sent straight from the partners to a DITU - data intercept technology unit which then processes the data in various ways before being sent on for further processing to appropriate nodes and ultimately becoming searchable through PRISM. An example of a DITU is here [2]. Microsoft provides unencrypted access to the NSA to user emails. One slightly tricky thing here was Microsoft deciding to roll out a new 'alias' feature enabling users to send emails under an alias. The DITU for outlook there ensured that NSA tracking would remain consistent regardless of the identity chosen by the user. Finally this [3] is a snip of the slide revealing the scope of data available from various partners. [3] And yes, there is supposed to be a formal request where an analyst requests our secret court system approve a search before they carry it out. That process is unsurprisingly a rubber stamp - the court approves 99.97% of all requests. But more importantly this is something with no meaningful oversight. As Snowden emphasized, "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want." So, yes it would be much closer to calling PRISM the all-seeing-eye than it would be to a system for sending out warrants. These systems are the reason that the Utah data center was built with storage estimated on the order of exabytes. One exabyte being a million terabytes. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism-slide-7.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism-slide-8.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
  - vkou 7y ago
    None of the facts you have cited contradict anything I said. The data that is sent into the PRISM system is data that is sent by cloud providers, in response to a targeted warrant. The data is not collected whole-sale - it is targeted to a particular individual. That's the whole bloody point of warrants. Once it's been sent by the cloud providers to the NSA, it ends up in a searchable database. I don't understand what is remotely controversial about that. The source of the data was not whole-sale collection - it was targeted warrants. That it becomes searchable afterwards is not relevant to anything. There is nothing illegal about police retaining data, and maybe even putting it in a searchable database, as long as that data was legally obtained - at least, in the United States. > And yes, there is supposed to be a formal request where an analyst requests our secret court system approve a search before they carry it out. That process is unsurprisingly a rubber stamp - the court approves 99.97% of all requests. But more importantly this is something with no meaningful oversight. I'm not sure you understand what the purpose of search warrants is. Search warrants are overwhelmingly rubber-stamped by courts, regardless of whether it's a secret FISA court, or a local judge who works two days a week in Small Town, AK. The point of having to get a search warrant is not to obstruct the work of police. The courts don't interpret that to be their job. The point of having to get a search warrant is to prevent fishing expeditions, and to make sure that police are conducting a narrow, targeted search. Most judges will rubber-stamp a search warrant for Bob Joe, based on incredibly flimsy testimony. Most judges will tell a police department to go pound sand if they wanted a search warrant for an entire town. As long as those FISA courts were dealing with search warrants of the first kind (And all evidence points to this), rubber-stamping them would not have been any different from how regular courts rubber-stamp targeted search warrants. > "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want." You are conflating two separate parts of PRISM, in a misleading manner. The first part is how it requests data from cloud providers. It does so by targeted warrant. This is incredibly similar to how regular police operate. They get a targeted warrant, a judge rubber-stamps it, and they serve it. It is incredibly likely that this is not illegal. The second part is that after it has retrieved the data, that data goes in a database, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry that works for a TLA can search for it (And go on fishing expeditions, in the already-retrieved set of data). This is also not illegal. If you think it is, please point me to legislature, or court precedent that implies that information obtained by the police in a warrant cannot be put into a searchable database. You are conflating the two, by making it sound like every Tom, Dick, and Harry that works for a TLA can go on an untargeted, whole-sale, unwarranted fishing expedition on Hotmail.com. The simple fact is, they can't. Not via PRISM, at least. This is why the NSA was conducting criminal tapping of cross-datacenter links - because PRISM only let them serve targeted warrants, and they wanted raw, whole-sale, untargeted, backdoor access to your data. That, for some reason, most of the firms implicated in the leaked NSA files were not granting them, hmm...

by rjf72 7y ago

vkou 7y ago

PRISM was an internal NSA web-form for sending what was considered (by some, but not tested in courts) to be legal data access requests to US cloud app providers. It was a f---ing web-form for sending targeted, narrowly-scoped, legal notices. Nothing more, nothing less. It was not some magical all-seeing Eye of Sauron that gave the NSA a backdoor into every word you ever said online, your blood type, and the number of nose hairs that you plucked this morning. The really illegal backdoor, unscoped intercepts, including the cable taps, were done without the consent of most (all?) of the companies in question, and were not done through PRISM, but rather through physical access to, say, cross-datacenter cables, straight up hacking, and similar means.[1] [1] See: SSL added and removed here :v) https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-here-nsa-smiley/ https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-her...

rjf72 7y ago
This is completely incorrect. To start with "IS, not WAS". PRISM hasn't gone anywhere and the most reasonable path here is to expect it's only substantially grown - as it already was doing at the time of its initial reveal. This [1] is a snippet of the PRISM collection overview. Data is sent straight from the partners to a DITU - data intercept technology unit which then processes the data in various ways before being sent on for further processing to appropriate nodes and ultimately becoming searchable through PRISM. An example of a DITU is here [2]. Microsoft provides unencrypted access to the NSA to user emails. One slightly tricky thing here was Microsoft deciding to roll out a new 'alias' feature enabling users to send emails under an alias. The DITU for outlook there ensured that NSA tracking would remain consistent regardless of the identity chosen by the user. Finally this [3] is a snip of the slide revealing the scope of data available from various partners. [3] And yes, there is supposed to be a formal request where an analyst requests our secret court system approve a search before they carry it out. That process is unsurprisingly a rubber stamp - the court approves 99.97% of all requests. But more importantly this is something with no meaningful oversight. As Snowden emphasized, "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want." So, yes it would be much closer to calling PRISM the all-seeing-eye than it would be to a system for sending out warrants. These systems are the reason that the Utah data center was built with storage estimated on the order of exabytes. One exabyte being a million terabytes. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism-slide-7.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism-slide-8.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
- vkou 7y ago
  None of the facts you have cited contradict anything I said. The data that is sent into the PRISM system is data that is sent by cloud providers, in response to a targeted warrant. The data is not collected whole-sale - it is targeted to a particular individual. That's the whole bloody point of warrants. Once it's been sent by the cloud providers to the NSA, it ends up in a searchable database. I don't understand what is remotely controversial about that. The source of the data was not whole-sale collection - it was targeted warrants. That it becomes searchable afterwards is not relevant to anything. There is nothing illegal about police retaining data, and maybe even putting it in a searchable database, as long as that data was legally obtained - at least, in the United States. > And yes, there is supposed to be a formal request where an analyst requests our secret court system approve a search before they carry it out. That process is unsurprisingly a rubber stamp - the court approves 99.97% of all requests. But more importantly this is something with no meaningful oversight. I'm not sure you understand what the purpose of search warrants is. Search warrants are overwhelmingly rubber-stamped by courts, regardless of whether it's a secret FISA court, or a local judge who works two days a week in Small Town, AK. The point of having to get a search warrant is not to obstruct the work of police. The courts don't interpret that to be their job. The point of having to get a search warrant is to prevent fishing expeditions, and to make sure that police are conducting a narrow, targeted search. Most judges will rubber-stamp a search warrant for Bob Joe, based on incredibly flimsy testimony. Most judges will tell a police department to go pound sand if they wanted a search warrant for an entire town. As long as those FISA courts were dealing with search warrants of the first kind (And all evidence points to this), rubber-stamping them would not have been any different from how regular courts rubber-stamp targeted search warrants. > "in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT [signals intelligence] databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want." You are conflating two separate parts of PRISM, in a misleading manner. The first part is how it requests data from cloud providers. It does so by targeted warrant. This is incredibly similar to how regular police operate. They get a targeted warrant, a judge rubber-stamps it, and they serve it. It is incredibly likely that this is not illegal. The second part is that after it has retrieved the data, that data goes in a database, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry that works for a TLA can search for it (And go on fishing expeditions, in the already-retrieved set of data). This is also not illegal. If you think it is, please point me to legislature, or court precedent that implies that information obtained by the police in a warrant cannot be put into a searchable database. You are conflating the two, by making it sound like every Tom, Dick, and Harry that works for a TLA can go on an untargeted, whole-sale, unwarranted fishing expedition on Hotmail.com. The simple fact is, they can't. Not via PRISM, at least. This is why the NSA was conducting criminal tapping of cross-datacenter links - because PRISM only let them serve targeted warrants, and they wanted raw, whole-sale, untargeted, backdoor access to your data. That, for some reason, most of the firms implicated in the leaked NSA files were not granting them, hmm...