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The world is changing. Facebook and Google are the new Halliburton and Lockheed of the age of behavior tracking and counterterrorism... Both companies spend m

The world is changing. Facebook and Google are the new Halliburton and Lockheed of the age of behavior tracking and counterterrorism... Both companies spend millions per year to provide elaborate back doors into their network for the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies. Both firms are too important not to become members of the military industrial complex... Their behavior tracking technology is trusted, ubiquitous, and has far broader reach than government systems. It starts with backdoors and warrants, then backdoors without warrants, then massive data mining and "preemptive" search of personal data, then installing government payloads on customer laptops, etc. etc. I don't see how anyone can trust firms that go along with warrantless backdoor policies not to install government payloads on customer machines when asked. First counterterrorism, then the IRS and immigration policies (better not mention your cleaning lady in a gmail message), then GPS data harvested and speeding tickets retroactively issued.

tcpekin 14y ago
Could you provide some references please? I'd like reading up on the things you mentioned.
- alttab 14y ago
  There probably aren't any. But it doesn't take a wild imagination to assume that both Google and Facebook facilitate government requests either with a dedicated staff or through an automated self-service interface or API.
  - phuff 14y ago
    It doesn't take a wild imagination, but it should probably take a reference or two to a documented source...
    - samstave 14y ago
      https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/1456242/hiding-backdoors-in-hardware http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/1456242/hiding-b... http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/05_11_nsa-scty-compliance.html http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/05_11_n... If you really require references, then you have not been paying attention. The NSA back-door in Cisco hardware has been known since at least 1997, when I first found out about it. There are lots and lots of links to be found if you look. They aren't even hidden. Just know, that NOTHING you do online is out of view of the NSA.
      - phuff 14y ago
        I don't doubt the NSA is spying. I think making the assertion without documentation that Google et al. have huge teams of people dedicated to helping them spy is a bit beyond the pale.
        grandalf 14y ago
        Consider the salary and benefits and office space costs of one employee at Google. Then assume that the backdoor interface requires at least a few employees. You're already at $1M. Now imagine a bit of extra infrastructure, people to deal with communications, legal, etc., and you're in the millions.
        andyzweb 14y ago
        pennies on the dolla®
        ImprovedSilence 14y ago
        And then we look at the defense budget, and it is in the trillions. I would bet anything that Google contracts to the NSA.
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        The only part of this I take exception to is "if you really require references then you haven't been paying attention". I have been paying attention ... to some of what's going on. I'm aware of certain specific cases of domestic espionage through telecoms and tech. However, providing concrete references always beats roaming the streets with a tinfoil hat on your head declaring "They're watching! The rays!". NB: if I take a covert photo of a guy wearing a tinfoil hat, does that make me The Man?
      - Karunamon 14y ago
        "NSA back-door" >This article describes technical best practices to help achieve compliance with U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) security requirements for equipment used in military installations.
- WestCoastJustin 14y ago
  I remember reading somewhere about the "google aurora hack" that the hackers were able to access gmails built-in backroom and were monitoring email accounts. I cannot find the link right now but here are a couple for google and facebook. Google: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ http://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
  - runn1ng 14y ago
    When I tried to find more about this once, I found out that all "sources" were basically Bruce Schneier opinion pieces.
- acqq 14y ago
  Somebody here already mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It helps to imagine the scale of it if that existed for Google and Facebook.
  - joering2 14y ago
    the Wikipedia article on this changed over the years (not looking for conspiracy theory here). About 2 years ago the lawsuit section was more detailed. It said something similar in logic to this article's title; the defendant replied that no room of such nature exists, BUT this lawsuit should be thrown out of the court because of National Security :)
- runjake 14y ago
  Some good places to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Domestic_activity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Domest...
- mkopinsky 14y ago
  http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- daenz 14y ago
  > No FUCK OFF, hacker news is better than... It's also better than screaming obscenities at eachother.
- grandalf 14y ago
  Fortunately others provided relevant links and data below my comment. edit: The immature and offensive comment was posted by the user with username posabsolute (Cedric Dugas), who has fortunately thought better of it and deleted it and has evidently created sock puppet accounts to downvote this comment.
einhverfr 14y ago
If only it were so limited. The government has long co-opted banks, etc. to do their spying. See California Bankers Association v. Shultz (1974) and pay particular attention to Justice Douglass's dissent. This problem has been festering for decades and only now in 2012 (Jones v. United States, re: GPS searches) have a majority on the Supreme Court even expressed concern over the rise of the surveillance state.... Who knows where this is leading.....
- grandalf 14y ago
  Very true. As someone who has considered using InTrade in election season and donating to WikiLeaks, it's incredible how linked government and banking are. What I find interesting is the thought experiment "how would you act if you wanted to evade the surveillance?" Simply going "off grid" won't work b/c it provides nearly as reliable a signal to those doing the tracking. I consider it likely that terrorist organizations have thought about this, and wonder what approaches they are using to try to thwart it. Since it would seem fairly possible to create a convincing appearance of legitimacy via FB and Gmail and even banking, the value of the surveillance must lie in understanding human network topologies so that physical agents can be deployed strategically to do traditional humint. Since most of the data is obtained w/o warrant it is unlikely to be admissible and used toward a conviction. This would be a problem if convicting the individual whose data was scanned was the goal. The goal is to aid the efforts of traditional law enforcement and intel by generating something like a "suspicion heatmap" over the social network as revealed by our financial, email, and social network transactions. This helps efficiently deploy agents, but once deployed the agents still need to make friends and infiltrate their assigned network edges. Cover is not always necessary to do this, since many members of the network are upstanding citizens who are happy to help with something security related. As I've speculated earlier, I would expect that honeypots (large and small) are the preferred way to actually perform experiments on the suspicion graph. It's fascinating to think about what sort of honeypots probably exist.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    In the banking case, the issue was that the data didnt need a warrant and could be used towards conviction. In recent decades the 4th Amendment has been significantly eroded and courts are only now waking up to the fact that there is a major problem. A lot of people thought GPS wouldn't be a problem based on the Knotts and Karo electonic beeper cases either.

tcpekin 14y ago

Could you provide some references please? I'd like reading up on the things you mentioned.

alttab 14y ago
There probably aren't any. But it doesn't take a wild imagination to assume that both Google and Facebook facilitate government requests either with a dedicated staff or through an automated self-service interface or API.
- phuff 14y ago
  It doesn't take a wild imagination, but it should probably take a reference or two to a documented source...
  - samstave 14y ago
    https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/1456242/hiding-backdoors-in-hardware http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/10/29/1456242/hiding-b... http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/05_11_nsa-scty-compliance.html http://www.cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/05_11_n... If you really require references, then you have not been paying attention. The NSA back-door in Cisco hardware has been known since at least 1997, when I first found out about it. There are lots and lots of links to be found if you look. They aren't even hidden. Just know, that NOTHING you do online is out of view of the NSA.
    - phuff 14y ago
      I don't doubt the NSA is spying. I think making the assertion without documentation that Google et al. have huge teams of people dedicated to helping them spy is a bit beyond the pale.
      - grandalf 14y ago
        Consider the salary and benefits and office space costs of one employee at Google. Then assume that the backdoor interface requires at least a few employees. You're already at $1M. Now imagine a bit of extra infrastructure, people to deal with communications, legal, etc., and you're in the millions.
        andyzweb 14y ago
        pennies on the dolla®
        ImprovedSilence 14y ago
        And then we look at the defense budget, and it is in the trillions. I would bet anything that Google contracts to the NSA.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      The only part of this I take exception to is "if you really require references then you haven't been paying attention". I have been paying attention ... to some of what's going on. I'm aware of certain specific cases of domestic espionage through telecoms and tech. However, providing concrete references always beats roaming the streets with a tinfoil hat on your head declaring "They're watching! The rays!". NB: if I take a covert photo of a guy wearing a tinfoil hat, does that make me The Man?
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      "NSA back-door" >This article describes technical best practices to help achieve compliance with U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) security requirements for equipment used in military installations.
WestCoastJustin 14y ago
I remember reading somewhere about the "google aurora hack" that the hackers were able to access gmails built-in backroom and were monitoring email accounts. I cannot find the link right now but here are a couple for google and facebook. Google: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ http://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
- runn1ng 14y ago
  When I tried to find more about this once, I found out that all "sources" were basically Bruce Schneier opinion pieces.
acqq 14y ago
Somebody here already mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A It helps to imagine the scale of it if that existed for Google and Facebook.
- joering2 14y ago
  the Wikipedia article on this changed over the years (not looking for conspiracy theory here). About 2 years ago the lawsuit section was more detailed. It said something similar in logic to this article's title; the defendant replied that no room of such nature exists, BUT this lawsuit should be thrown out of the court because of National Security :)
runjake 14y ago
Some good places to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Domestic_activity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Domest...
mkopinsky 14y ago
http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

daenz 14y ago
> No FUCK OFF, hacker news is better than... It's also better than screaming obscenities at eachother.
grandalf 14y ago
Fortunately others provided relevant links and data below my comment. edit: The immature and offensive comment was posted by the user with username posabsolute (Cedric Dugas), who has fortunately thought better of it and deleted it and has evidently created sock puppet accounts to downvote this comment.

einhverfr 14y ago

If only it were so limited. The government has long co-opted banks, etc. to do their spying. See California Bankers Association v. Shultz (1974) and pay particular attention to Justice Douglass's dissent. This problem has been festering for decades and only now in 2012 (Jones v. United States, re: GPS searches) have a majority on the Supreme Court even expressed concern over the rise of the surveillance state.... Who knows where this is leading.....

grandalf 14y ago
Very true. As someone who has considered using InTrade in election season and donating to WikiLeaks, it's incredible how linked government and banking are. What I find interesting is the thought experiment "how would you act if you wanted to evade the surveillance?" Simply going "off grid" won't work b/c it provides nearly as reliable a signal to those doing the tracking. I consider it likely that terrorist organizations have thought about this, and wonder what approaches they are using to try to thwart it. Since it would seem fairly possible to create a convincing appearance of legitimacy via FB and Gmail and even banking, the value of the surveillance must lie in understanding human network topologies so that physical agents can be deployed strategically to do traditional humint. Since most of the data is obtained w/o warrant it is unlikely to be admissible and used toward a conviction. This would be a problem if convicting the individual whose data was scanned was the goal. The goal is to aid the efforts of traditional law enforcement and intel by generating something like a "suspicion heatmap" over the social network as revealed by our financial, email, and social network transactions. This helps efficiently deploy agents, but once deployed the agents still need to make friends and infiltrate their assigned network edges. Cover is not always necessary to do this, since many members of the network are upstanding citizens who are happy to help with something security related. As I've speculated earlier, I would expect that honeypots (large and small) are the preferred way to actually perform experiments on the suspicion graph. It's fascinating to think about what sort of honeypots probably exist.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  In the banking case, the issue was that the data didnt need a warrant and could be used towards conviction. In recent decades the 4th Amendment has been significantly eroded and courts are only now waking up to the fact that there is a major problem. A lot of people thought GPS wouldn't be a problem based on the Knotts and Karo electonic beeper cases either.