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Please describe (in a sketched terms) a technical method by which anyone could get "direct access" to the user-data servers of Facebook, AOL, Google, etc. Reme

by gohrt 13y ago

Please describe (in a sketched terms) a technical method by which anyone could get "direct access" to the user-data servers of Facebook, AOL, Google, etc. Remember that each company has its own homegrown user-data data storage format, homegrown distributed data storage system, homegrown datacenters(!), and firewalls. These companies aren't running MySQL or Oracle, and these systems are constantly being updated with new features and data model migrations. Does that seem plausible? Contrast against what has been freely admitted since NSLs started appearing: Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand.

pvnick 13y ago
I am a "big data" engineer, and I have no idea how they could do something like this. However my inability to theorize a potential method of collecting this data is not evidence for/against its existence. Remember the NSA employs some of the most brilliant software engineers and mathematicians on the planet whose job it is over the course of years to figure this sort of stuff out. I'm sure they've got a few tricks up their sleeve. Time will tell of course, and more revelations are reportedly "imminent"
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanmolden 13y ago
  This. To paraphrase a favorite Daniel Dennett quote: don't mistake lack of imagination for insight into feasibility.
burntsushi 13y ago
> Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand. But when it's been shown that a single subpoena can be "all phone data for three months for every customer", then describing that as "direct access" doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. It's clear that there are crucial and important technical details missing. But it's also clear that the NSA has much more fluid access than one-user-per-approved-subpoena-at-one-point-in-time. Depending upon the target audience of the leaked PRISM slides, the description "direct access" may be quite prudent.
- rtpg 13y ago
  The phone data stuff wasn't part of PRISM. In general the stuff coming out of PRISM seemed to me to just be the general name for how the NSA hands out the NSLs(which are awful in their own right) to all these comapnies. A good side-effect of all this hype is people are looking at those. But PRISM doesn't seem to bring anything "new" to the table. Correct me if I'm wrong
  - burntsushi 13y ago
    I know the phone data isn't part of PRISM, but everything that has come out seems deeply connected by section 215 of the Patriot act. Which is supposedly what's "justifying" all this data gathering.
Vivtek 13y ago
Or each company sets up a continuous mirror. NSA has direct access to the data without (legalistically) direct access to the servers. Everybody's happy except democracy. Not that I think this is the case - I suspect your scenario is what at least Google is doing. But if it's set up as an API (they submit a search query, Google approves it or even rubber stamps it in many cases, the query is run, the results sent to the dropbox), then the PRISM description is pretty accurate.
- igravious 13y ago
  > Everybody's happy except democracy. I could just up-vote you anonymously but I would rather say in person that this quotation tickles me pink and that I am going to steal it.
danenania 13y ago
I like the explanation that it's basically a REST api with a required has_fisa_approval field[1]. In practice this gives unrestricted access because FISA only requires a hearing to be held after more than a week of surveillance against a single target. The existence of the has_fisa_approval checkbox allows the companies to (dubiously) claim "no direct access" even though it is all but equivalent in practice. 1: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-theory/ http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-m...
vidarh 13y ago
I don't know about Google etc., but I used to work at Yahoo, and while there were substantial security measures in place, it would take a couple of engineers with sufficient access a couple of days to put together a solution to be able to pull out a stream of user data and e-mail data somewhere. In fact, all of this data was stored in systems prepared for easy replication anyway. Somehow I doubt it'd be all that much more technically challenging elsewhere. It's not a hard problem if there's people complicit at the right levels in these organisations. If there are no people complicit, then it would be difficult, yes. But we don't have enough information to determine whether "direct access" would involve a handful of people for a few days or weeks to get a feed or API set up, or if it would require covert interception of data and people sneaking around at night.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  This is a good point. People asking for specifics on how PRISM works are just doing useless CNN-style modern "journalism": i.e. a bunch of time wasting speculation. The fact is, there are a million ways they could provide "direct" access to the data. Every company that has data has to have a way to replicate that data (e.g. to offsite locations in case the main site goes down, etc.). Replicating to the government would just take one person who knows how to turn on that replication and point it somewhere.
sp332 13y ago
Don't all of those companies have published APIs for getting that data?

by gohrt 13y ago

pvnick 13y ago

I am a "big data" engineer, and I have no idea how they could do something like this. However my inability to theorize a potential method of collecting this data is not evidence for/against its existence. Remember the NSA employs some of the most brilliant software engineers and mathematicians on the planet whose job it is over the course of years to figure this sort of stuff out. I'm sure they've got a few tricks up their sleeve. Time will tell of course, and more revelations are reportedly "imminent"

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ryanmolden 13y ago
This. To paraphrase a favorite Daniel Dennett quote: don't mistake lack of imagination for insight into feasibility.

burntsushi 13y ago

> Each company sets up a "safe-deposit" server for delivering specific one-off subsets of subpoena'd data, and the company's engineers deliver data to that server upon demand. But when it's been shown that a single subpoena can be "all phone data for three months for every customer", then describing that as "direct access" doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. It's clear that there are crucial and important technical details missing. But it's also clear that the NSA has much more fluid access than one-user-per-approved-subpoena-at-one-point-in-time. Depending upon the target audience of the leaked PRISM slides, the description "direct access" may be quite prudent.

rtpg 13y ago
The phone data stuff wasn't part of PRISM. In general the stuff coming out of PRISM seemed to me to just be the general name for how the NSA hands out the NSLs(which are awful in their own right) to all these comapnies. A good side-effect of all this hype is people are looking at those. But PRISM doesn't seem to bring anything "new" to the table. Correct me if I'm wrong
- burntsushi 13y ago
  I know the phone data isn't part of PRISM, but everything that has come out seems deeply connected by section 215 of the Patriot act. Which is supposedly what's "justifying" all this data gathering.

Vivtek 13y ago

Or each company sets up a continuous mirror. NSA has direct access to the data without (legalistically) direct access to the servers. Everybody's happy except democracy. Not that I think this is the case - I suspect your scenario is what at least Google is doing. But if it's set up as an API (they submit a search query, Google approves it or even rubber stamps it in many cases, the query is run, the results sent to the dropbox), then the PRISM description is pretty accurate.

igravious 13y ago
> Everybody's happy except democracy. I could just up-vote you anonymously but I would rather say in person that this quotation tickles me pink and that I am going to steal it.

danenania 13y ago

I like the explanation that it's basically a REST api with a required has_fisa_approval field[1]. In practice this gives unrestricted access because FISA only requires a hearing to be held after more than a week of surveillance against a single target. The existence of the has_fisa_approval checkbox allows the companies to (dubiously) claim "no direct access" even though it is all but equivalent in practice. 1: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-my-new-theory/ http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-m...

vidarh 13y ago

I don't know about Google etc., but I used to work at Yahoo, and while there were substantial security measures in place, it would take a couple of engineers with sufficient access a couple of days to put together a solution to be able to pull out a stream of user data and e-mail data somewhere. In fact, all of this data was stored in systems prepared for easy replication anyway. Somehow I doubt it'd be all that much more technically challenging elsewhere. It's not a hard problem if there's people complicit at the right levels in these organisations. If there are no people complicit, then it would be difficult, yes. But we don't have enough information to determine whether "direct access" would involve a handful of people for a few days or weeks to get a feed or API set up, or if it would require covert interception of data and people sneaking around at night.

flyinRyan 13y ago
This is a good point. People asking for specifics on how PRISM works are just doing useless CNN-style modern "journalism": i.e. a bunch of time wasting speculation. The fact is, there are a million ways they could provide "direct" access to the data. Every company that has data has to have a way to replicate that data (e.g. to offsite locations in case the main site goes down, etc.). Replicating to the government would just take one person who knows how to turn on that replication and point it somewhere.

sp332 13y ago

Don't all of those companies have published APIs for getting that data?