11 ms·

Why did he not give even a small technical overview on what they are capable of? He should've been able to given he has a lot of technical expertise and it woul

Why did he not give even a small technical overview on what they are capable of? He should've been able to given he has a lot of technical expertise and it would've helped his evidence a lot. Did they figure out how to tap complicated SSL? Is it hardware based? He gave no hints but could have easily. Instead it's this blanket statement that's supposed to imply that all encryption is pointless.

steveklabnik 13y ago
Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter that he was given the technical details and isn't releasing them.
- gnaritas 13y ago
  Glenn Greenwald is a partisan hack, his opinion is worth basically nothing.
  - icelancer 13y ago
    Partisan towards... what? He is a very strong civil libertarian.
    - patrickaljord 13y ago
      Here's Glenn either being intellectually dishonest or intellectually incompetent. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2
      - jongraehl 13y ago
        Thanks for bringing that up. I'd have to agree that Glenn Greenwald is an intellectual rotten apple. You don't accuse intelligent atheists of "racist islamophobia" if you're a good actor. That said, he might just have an irrational us vs. them "liberals vs. racists" complex and be able to speak sensibly on other matters.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - Amadou 13y ago
        When I read that I see Sam Harris attributing things like "honor killings" to the doctrine of Islam as if Islam is a monolithic entity. He's equating the extremists with the mainstream and that is exactly what the islamaphobes do - insist that the crazies are the ones who have the true interpretation of islam and that the vast majority of regular muslims don't count because they aren't crazy. It is kind of like saying that all christians should be judged by the actions of the Westboro Baptists. The crazies get the headlines but they only define the fringe, not the mainstream. FWIW, the one thing I can agree with Sam Harris on is that European integration of muslims (and other minorities) is slow compared to the US because they have less of a commitment to freedom of speech. For all of our racial problems, the US does a better job of integrating immigrant communities because we have a culture of airing our dirty laundry, of hashing out our feelings - bigotry and all - and thus working through the differences rather than sheltering people from possibly being offended. Its ugly and frequently unpleasant but in the long run I think we reach a level of accommodation a lot sooner. FWIW, I'm an atheist who married a woman from an immigrant muslim family although I've probably been in more mosques than she has.
        floody-berry 13y ago
        http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-morality.aspx#honor http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-p... The _low_ end is 15-20% who think honor killing is rarely/sometimes/often justified. The high end is 60-70%. How is this "fringe"?
        mkhattab 13y ago
        That survey is flawed because it's based on culturally influenced beliefs of Muslims in tribal-based societies where the concept of honor has a higher precedence than religion itself. I believe you would find similar results among Christian and Jewish populations in the Middle-east. For instance, in Egypt, where I've lived for a considerable time, Christians and Muslims share practically the same family values with varying degrees. If a Christian woman and Muslim man, or vice-versa, decide to elope then either of them risk being honor-killed or at the very least disowned.
      - Myrmornis 13y ago
        Greenwald has written many things, most extremely valuable. I also am critical of his exchange with Sam Harris but that's one discussion in hundreds or thousands.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      Which makes him a partisan. Perhaps you should lookup the word, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
  - waterphone 13y ago
    In what way is he a partisan? He has condemned as equally bad both the Bush and Obama administrations. When Bush was President, Democrats loved him because he regularly wrote scathing criticisms of Bush's overreaching actions, and now that Obama has carried on Bush's programs (and made them worse, apparently) and Greenwald's criticized him with the same level of intensity, Obama's supporters now seem to loathe him. Reading the things people send him on Twitter, it's disturbing how many people have an absolute hatred of him. It's such a coordinated attack against him, all repeating the same talking points, it brings this to mind: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-oper...
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      Partisan means predjiduce in favor of a cause, one can criticize Bush and Obama and still be partisan.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
Interesting that he used the word "machines." I wonder if we're talking firmware hacks or even code in firmware that very few people are aware of. Could Intel say no to a NSL without breaking the law?
jiggy2011 13y ago
He says "plant bugs in machines" , so that would seem to imply malware of some variety.
- detcader 13y ago
  The FBI already plants or at least attempts to plant malware on targets (recently: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/25/texas_judge_denies_fbi_request_to_use_trojan_to_infiltrate_unknown_suspect.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/25/texas_jud... and regularly: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/ ) Also, judges can now order people to decrypt whatever ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/decryption-order/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/decryption-order/ )
grey-area 13y ago
I took that to mean that they have exploits they can run once they which will let them take over your machine and install keyloggers etc. to report back any further activity. It wouldn't take much for them to purchase or develop a suite of vulnerabilities for all the major operating systems/browsers which they keep current, and once they have that any encryption is pointless as they can see what you see/type/hear. He mentioned it right after talking about seeing your machine on the network and mentioned hardware bugs separately.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Some major military contractors (Raytheon I think is one, BAH another maybe) were looking to hire security experts to find vulnerabilities. There is a robust black market for 0days and I can't imagine the govt. isn't interested in playing. Especially after the cyber-terror war drum has been beating for a while and Chinese hackers scaring everyone's grandmas (most likely articles seeded by PR agencies in preparation for a major contract award to a military industrial contractor).
  - asdftmp 13y ago
    I thought it was common knowledge that governments actively buy and use 0days? They certainly do, just look at Stuxnet's astounding and ham handed usage of 4 0days (in the first version) for an easy example all the way back in 2010.
shardling 13y ago
Perhaps he thinks that revealing technical details would actually hurt national security? (And I could easily see that.) His goal wasn't to tear down the NSA, but to reveal what they've been up to domestically.
ryanmolden 13y ago
This is not my area, so excuse the ignorance, but this statement: A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards." Specifically the part about 'all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards'. Does that not imply they have found a weakness in TLS/SSL? Once the information is transmitted (say my Facebook password) to an https endpoint it is already encrypted, no? So them 'sniffing'/intercepting the packets would do no good, unless they could decrypt them.
- gkop 13y ago
  Intercept could also mean man-in-the-middle.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    Which would be trivial if they had agreements with the various mostly US providers to quickly get man-in-the-middle signed keys from their CA's. Although this seems like it would be quick to spot since if you were watching certificate fingerprints change then you'd see the switchover and switchback.
    - ryanmolden 13y ago
      Yeah, I know nothing about this area (so this is just speculation, ignore it as such if you wish), but it seems getting a firehose feed of all traffic would be easier and less exposure prone, than getting every ISP to allow a MITM and having absolutely no one in the computer security industry notice. Don't get me wrong, I would prefer a MITM, at least then you know they haven't broken crypto that is widely believed secure, the alternative is a bit scarier :)
    - Amadou 13y ago
      I use the Cert Patrol plugin ( http://patrol.psyced.org/ http://patrol.psyced.org/ ) and I've noticed periods of a few days to a week where SSL certs on major sites like google have changed rapidly. Usually they were all from the same authority so I didn't think much of it. But now I am even more paranoid. Thanks man.
wavesounds 13y ago
Technical details are in the remaining 37 slides he gave to reporters which they are refusing to release

steveklabnik 13y ago

Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter that he was given the technical details and isn't releasing them.

gnaritas 13y ago
Glenn Greenwald is a partisan hack, his opinion is worth basically nothing.
- icelancer 13y ago
  Partisan towards... what? He is a very strong civil libertarian.
  - patrickaljord 13y ago
    Here's Glenn either being intellectually dishonest or intellectually incompetent. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2 http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2
    - jongraehl 13y ago
      Thanks for bringing that up. I'd have to agree that Glenn Greenwald is an intellectual rotten apple. You don't accuse intelligent atheists of "racist islamophobia" if you're a good actor. That said, he might just have an irrational us vs. them "liberals vs. racists" complex and be able to speak sensibly on other matters.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - Amadou 13y ago
      When I read that I see Sam Harris attributing things like "honor killings" to the doctrine of Islam as if Islam is a monolithic entity. He's equating the extremists with the mainstream and that is exactly what the islamaphobes do - insist that the crazies are the ones who have the true interpretation of islam and that the vast majority of regular muslims don't count because they aren't crazy. It is kind of like saying that all christians should be judged by the actions of the Westboro Baptists. The crazies get the headlines but they only define the fringe, not the mainstream. FWIW, the one thing I can agree with Sam Harris on is that European integration of muslims (and other minorities) is slow compared to the US because they have less of a commitment to freedom of speech. For all of our racial problems, the US does a better job of integrating immigrant communities because we have a culture of airing our dirty laundry, of hashing out our feelings - bigotry and all - and thus working through the differences rather than sheltering people from possibly being offended. Its ugly and frequently unpleasant but in the long run I think we reach a level of accommodation a lot sooner. FWIW, I'm an atheist who married a woman from an immigrant muslim family although I've probably been in more mosques than she has.
      - floody-berry 13y ago
        http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-morality.aspx#honor http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-p... The _low_ end is 15-20% who think honor killing is rarely/sometimes/often justified. The high end is 60-70%. How is this "fringe"?
        mkhattab 13y ago
        That survey is flawed because it's based on culturally influenced beliefs of Muslims in tribal-based societies where the concept of honor has a higher precedence than religion itself. I believe you would find similar results among Christian and Jewish populations in the Middle-east. For instance, in Egypt, where I've lived for a considerable time, Christians and Muslims share practically the same family values with varying degrees. If a Christian woman and Muslim man, or vice-versa, decide to elope then either of them risk being honor-killed or at the very least disowned.
    - Myrmornis 13y ago
      Greenwald has written many things, most extremely valuable. I also am critical of his exchange with Sam Harris but that's one discussion in hundreds or thousands.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    Which makes him a partisan. Perhaps you should lookup the word, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
- waterphone 13y ago
  In what way is he a partisan? He has condemned as equally bad both the Bush and Obama administrations. When Bush was President, Democrats loved him because he regularly wrote scathing criticisms of Bush's overreaching actions, and now that Obama has carried on Bush's programs (and made them worse, apparently) and Greenwald's criticized him with the same level of intensity, Obama's supporters now seem to loathe him. Reading the things people send him on Twitter, it's disturbing how many people have an absolute hatred of him. It's such a coordinated attack against him, all repeating the same talking points, it brings this to mind: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-oper...
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    Partisan means predjiduce in favor of a cause, one can criticize Bush and Obama and still be partisan.

drzaiusapelord 13y ago

Interesting that he used the word "machines." I wonder if we're talking firmware hacks or even code in firmware that very few people are aware of. Could Intel say no to a NSL without breaking the law?

jiggy2011 13y ago

He says "plant bugs in machines" , so that would seem to imply malware of some variety.

detcader 13y ago
The FBI already plants or at least attempts to plant malware on targets (recently: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/25/texas_judge_denies_fbi_request_to_use_trojan_to_infiltrate_unknown_suspect.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/25/texas_jud... and regularly: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/ ) Also, judges can now order people to decrypt whatever ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/decryption-order/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/decryption-order/ )

grey-area 13y ago

I took that to mean that they have exploits they can run once they which will let them take over your machine and install keyloggers etc. to report back any further activity. It wouldn't take much for them to purchase or develop a suite of vulnerabilities for all the major operating systems/browsers which they keep current, and once they have that any encryption is pointless as they can see what you see/type/hear. He mentioned it right after talking about seeing your machine on the network and mentioned hardware bugs separately.

rdtsc 13y ago
Some major military contractors (Raytheon I think is one, BAH another maybe) were looking to hire security experts to find vulnerabilities. There is a robust black market for 0days and I can't imagine the govt. isn't interested in playing. Especially after the cyber-terror war drum has been beating for a while and Chinese hackers scaring everyone's grandmas (most likely articles seeded by PR agencies in preparation for a major contract award to a military industrial contractor).
- asdftmp 13y ago
  I thought it was common knowledge that governments actively buy and use 0days? They certainly do, just look at Stuxnet's astounding and ham handed usage of 4 0days (in the first version) for an easy example all the way back in 2010.

shardling 13y ago

Perhaps he thinks that revealing technical details would actually hurt national security? (And I could easily see that.) His goal wasn't to tear down the NSA, but to reveal what they've been up to domestically.

ryanmolden 13y ago

This is not my area, so excuse the ignorance, but this statement: A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards." Specifically the part about 'all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards'. Does that not imply they have found a weakness in TLS/SSL? Once the information is transmitted (say my Facebook password) to an https endpoint it is already encrypted, no? So them 'sniffing'/intercepting the packets would do no good, unless they could decrypt them.

gkop 13y ago
Intercept could also mean man-in-the-middle.
- XorNot 13y ago
  Which would be trivial if they had agreements with the various mostly US providers to quickly get man-in-the-middle signed keys from their CA's. Although this seems like it would be quick to spot since if you were watching certificate fingerprints change then you'd see the switchover and switchback.
  - ryanmolden 13y ago
    Yeah, I know nothing about this area (so this is just speculation, ignore it as such if you wish), but it seems getting a firehose feed of all traffic would be easier and less exposure prone, than getting every ISP to allow a MITM and having absolutely no one in the computer security industry notice. Don't get me wrong, I would prefer a MITM, at least then you know they haven't broken crypto that is widely believed secure, the alternative is a bit scarier :)
  - Amadou 13y ago
    I use the Cert Patrol plugin ( http://patrol.psyced.org/ http://patrol.psyced.org/ ) and I've noticed periods of a few days to a week where SSL certs on major sites like google have changed rapidly. Usually they were all from the same authority so I didn't think much of it. But now I am even more paranoid. Thanks man.

wavesounds 13y ago

Technical details are in the remaining 37 slides he gave to reporters which they are refusing to release