16 ms·

>This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront o

by deveac 13y ago

>This is overwhelming. Even when you always hear the claims about we knew this was going on, somehow it is still shocking when you see it all laid out infront of you with screenshots and the capabilities described. It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I'm a practically addicted news junkie (especially tech news) and while I've been aware of a fair amount of what has been exposed in this latest leak, it seems that every day there are revelations new to me, and what is revealed absolutely shocks the conscience. And I'm an outlier. I'm more plugged in to reporting on this subject than 99% of the globe's population, and this subject tangles with the rights and treatment of a large portion of the population of said globe. The staggering majority had no clue, has no clue, and no, they were never informed. For all intents and purposes, the global media has been asleep or complicit. It's staggeringly important to keep telling this story at every level specifically because "we" don't know, and still don't.

davej 13y ago
> For all intensive purposes FYI, it should be "For all intents and purposes". :)
- deveac 13y ago
  Thank you davej, fixed. That mistake is hard-coded in me. It won't be the last time I make it.
  - chakalakasp 13y ago
    Great Googly Moogly this place is friendly. Like Reddit with a +7 CHR and +11 INT roll.
    - cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
      It's great, isn't it? :) I'm just scared some day it will wear off, like the state Reddit seems to be in now...
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
First of all: keep the staggering to a minimum. Second: realizing that "we should have known" and "none of this is new" isn't so much about reading news articles and being "plugged in", but rather having an understanding of how the Internet works. To oversimplify greatly, you're essentially playing a very precise game of telephone between around 10-20 different people, and usually about 1-3 different publicly-owned corporations. To be surprised at the possibility of storing packets is somewhat naive considering how simple it is to do.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Third: NSA whistleblowers have been stating what was more or less going on for years… (here's a talk by Binney from last November [0]) Funny enough, I wrote a post on this subject matter too before the Snowden leaks where I included the video as well…[1] [0]: http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/21783?html5=true&size=full&custom_width=432&player=simple&external_stylesheet= http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/21783?html5=true&size=full&cust... [1]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent
- kazagistar 13y ago
  Maybe I am just having trouble seeing the point of "see I was right all along"? Why would we be upset at the newcomers to the ranks of the enlightened? I would prefer to just nod, point to the preexisting evidence, instead of driving people away with unproductive "I told you so" hostility.
  - deveac 13y ago
    I agree completely. We need more education on the subject as opposed to back patting, and we definitely don't need to attack the very people that need to hear and understand the reporting most, as the person you are replying to is doing, by calling them naive. A bit sad imho.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      My issue with the conversation now that this has gone "mainstream" is that people are now allowing the media to shape their viewpoints (like everything else that seems to blow up in peoples minds who are normally distracted with reality tv or how awesome they think their life is[personal experience from family members/friends/how I lived for some time]), without digging further beyond what people are talking about at the surface. The emotions are most likely to be anger and disgust of having their sense of reality shattered, inciting most people who feel powerless to change their habits, to go and protest. And as we all have seen around the world and even within the united states, protests can get pretty hairy, pretty quickly and not in the favor of people who want to live peacefully… Outside of the issue of inciting the masses to act out physically, there is very little public "mainstream" acknowledgement that corporations are collecting and sharing the same types of data (and more) between one another, where issues surrounding any type of morality become selling points for products. So then the theoretical situation becomes: Government agrees to stop its dragnet programs, non governmental entities will continue to do so as long as people use their services… where's the protest for that (and when that comes they'll hire private contractors to protect them and their interests [remember OWS 2011])? I posted this a while back on information asymmetry and the surveillance state [0], which lays out simply what is going on now in the minds of people and what is at the core of the issue people are talking about. I also propose an idea about the direction I feel would be more beneficial for the energy to be placed on my post as apposed to the logical conclusion of where all the anger will be placed by people who are now willing to enter the conversation from recent "mainstream" exposure [1]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6042241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6042241 [1]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/52533760444/the-nsa-is-closed-source-were-open-source http://blog.pictobar.com/post/52533760444/the-nsa-is-closed-...
bmelton 13y ago
You're both right. If you read the PATRIOT Act, it's easy to look backwards and see that the things we're becoming aware of now are logical extensions of what was being asked for way back then. It is, however, VERY easy not to have been able to have that foresight, and I think that the insights people were expecting the government to have been constrained by the fact that all the information of value is collected by neutral third parties. Google, Yahoo, Twitter, etc., aren't likely colluders with the government. Plus, at the time of the PATRIOT Act's passage, there wasn't quite as much information being put on social media, or out to the public in general. Not as much was online, digital, or otherwise easily indexable. There were those predicting this sort of possibility before the PATRIOT Act's enactment, and since, to be sure, but you shouldn't feel responsible for not having seen the signs yourself, or for having heeded the words of what probably seemed like kooky overreactionaries from back in the day. The funniest part about this, to me, is that somewhere, very quietly, Richard Stallman is quietly telling us all the he told us so, and he's absolutely right, and always has been. Neverminding that, he's largely seen as a crazy old paranoiac who we should respect for his IT knowledge, while having to forgive the rest of his eccentricities.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  If Richard Stallman is quietly berating us somewhere, he can go fuck himself. Part of educating the masses is being a person who people want to listen to. If he failed at that, he's no better than anyone else, and perhaps far worse, because of all the lost potential.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Part of being intelligent and shrewd is listening to the words that people say, and judging arguments based on their merit. The idea that Stallman should go fuck himself for not dumbing down or tarting up the message enough for you to pay attention to him makes you the asshole, not him.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    In my experience, telling people to do something hard (open source, keep privacy, etc.) in the face of a barely perceived danger (government is coming to get you) is kind of a hard message to get heard. Aside from that, I didn't mean to seriously suggest that he's out there passing judgement on us so much as I was attempting to acknowledge how hypocritical we are for having disregarded his message because of his eccentricities. I think your statement, that he should actively try to be more popular for us to care, is further proof of how wrong we are to be that way. In an ideal world, your response would have made a perfect satire of how Americans are likely to react in the face of the responsible elder telling us to eat our proverbial vegetables. That is isn't saddens me.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> I'm a practically addicted news junkie ... More like a news sheep. The mass market news is and has always been 49% fluff and 49% lies. Comments from people who already knew what the NSA does are not "self aggrandizing". The are other-insulting. You should rightly be ashamed that you walk through life in a news fog of up-to-the-minute minutiae. Read books by retired insiders, talk to current insiders and contractors. That's the only way you will learn anything about anything. To wait for the newsmen to do it for you is to sign your mind over to tampon salesmen. The NSA story is staggeringly unimportant. Every government, many companies, and rather a lot of organized criminals run intel and counterintel operations. It is just a fact of life, like antibiotics and highway construction. It is inevitable that there must be a national American signals intelligence organization. What os staggetingly important is why the NSA alone, out of all the spy organizations, is being singled out for a comprehensive media war. The most likely explanation is that the Democratic Party needed something to distract from its pecadillos. The next most likely explanation is that a foreign government is getting themselves some payback. In any event, if you care about this non-news, you are just another mindless pawn.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  Wow, what a staggering misinterpretation of what the parent said.
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    Every time I post the truth about this NSA fiasco, I get: 1. Downvoted to oblivion by a hivemind, and 2. Somebody like you chimes in with a content-free emotional outburst. So exactly what did I misunderstand? The incontrovertible fact that this really isn't news? The fact that every history and exposé on the NSA has been saying this for decades? The fact that the NSA tried cramming the Clipper chip and key length restrictions down our throats to make domestic spying easier? For half a decade this was a weekly running joke on Slashdot that you had to have been living under a rock to miss. That the previous commenter claimed to be a "news junky" and then admitted that by news he means the mass media—a pack of tampon salesmen and political hatchetmen.
doktrin 13y ago
I think it's just a demonstration of complacency more than any actual knowledge on the subject. I've noticed it's invariably my non technical acquaintances who are the first to pontificate on how this is all somehow boring old hat.
weland 13y ago
> It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I agree that "know" is a bit too glorifying. I propose "suspected". I don't find this surprising at all. Practically 99.99% of a normal user's Internet activity is centered on Facebook, Google (including Gmail) and a handful of other sites. The amount of data everyone is requiring in order to provide a service also includes pretty much anything you need in order to track someone. It's not news you need to pay attention to but some of the more theoretical aspects of networking in a second-year course.
- LoganCale 13y ago
  I have nothing wrong with people having suspected it for a long time, or even saying so. I suspected it for a long time as well. My problem is with the attitude many people seem to have once evidence confirming those suspicions comes out and they go on about how the evidence means nothing because they knew it all along. No, the evidence confirms their suspicions, which makes it incredibly important! Ultimately, whether they intend to or not, such statements end up making other people who are hearing about this for the first time more complacent about it because they come into the comments and see a bunch of people going on about how it's nothing new and therefore the new information is no big deal.
aasarava 13y ago
I share your pet peeve and I can only assume that the "meh, no big surprise here" response stems from two things: wanting to sound just as knowledgeable as the person who brings up the topic (despite not having any new information); and at the same time justifying their complacency about the issue.
- kalid 13y ago
  Exactly. That type of cynicism and one-upmanship is grating.
- deveac 13y ago
  >and at the same time justifying their complacency about the issue. A good theory, as I have an extremely difficult time imagining anyone in an activist (non-complacent) stance on this issue ever reacting like that to these revelations.
graycat 13y ago
From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc. Then back at HQ, can send the node what are essentially 'filters' to return 'alerts' and the associated content. So, point: As a system, it's quite obvious. As software, it's quite routine. And, from their description of working with anomalies, they are being just intuitive and elementary and not at all advanced or powerful. It would appear that a terrorist Internet user could do fairly well beating that system by using a proxy server also used by many other Internet users and also using a lot of strong encryption -- PGP used well might be strong enough.
- rhizome 13y ago
  From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc. See? No "direct access!" Google/FB/Apple's statements, totally reassuring.
commandar 13y ago
For me, personally, it's not about "look how smart I am" as it is genuine surprise that the story actually seems to be sticking this time. I'm glad that people are paying attention, but especially early on, it wasn't entirely clear that Snowden's leaks were substantially different from the leaks that have been coming out of the NSA for years that never got traction in the media.
- yk 13y ago
  I think the type of leak is substantially different, the other leaks were all somewhat hard to describe. The Snowden leaks have the names of well known companies in big menacing letters.
griffordson 13y ago
The traditional media is complicit. And it isn't some grand conspiracy either, they just share the same interests as the rest of the establishment, being part of (and/or owned by) the establishment themselves. There is good independent media that has been covering the story for years though. Here's a Democracy Now story from February 2005: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/10/no_place_to_hide_award_winning http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/10/no_place_to_hide_award... Democracy Now has an incredible archive on this subject too. Right now it starts here: http://www.democracynow.org/topics/nsa/7 http://www.democracynow.org/topics/nsa/7 Specifically, they've done some great interviews with previous whistleblowers: http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/william_binney http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/william_binney http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/russell_tice http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/russell_tice http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/thomas_drake http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/thomas_drake http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jesselyn_radack http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jesselyn_radack Other interesting guests: http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jacob_appelbaum http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jacob_appelbaum http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/laura_poitras http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/laura_poitras http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/james_bamford http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/james_bamford
- jjp9999 13y ago
  Only when Jacob Appelbaum was at Wikileaks, they also allegedly stole people's data (through Tor networks). Assange has admitted it - http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/wikileaks-intercepted-private-communications-maintains-access-47274.html http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/wikileaks-intercepted-...
  - griffordson 13y ago
    How is that relevant to the NSA story exactly? Are you saying that the Government vacuuming up any and all data it can, and granting internal and external analysts easy access to that data, is comparable to the owner of a private server analyzing the network traffic of their servers and networks? If you want to hold private server and network operators to a standard that restricts them from doing that you're going to have a bad time. And the purpose of Tor might be different than you imagine: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhatIsTor https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhatIsTor Or are you just trying to discredit Appelbaum, Assange, and/or Wikileaks? Also, is that your article? Should you disclose that? And is there any reason you linked to it rather than the original New Yorker article here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?printable=true http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...
freshhawk 13y ago
Is it self-aggrandizing? I suppose I'm one of those people. I was shocked by having this laid out as well but I really did just assume this was probably going on. It was technically possible, it was politically possible and it was financially possible. If I shared the worldview of the people doing this and been in the position to do this, I would have been itching to start this level of collection and data mining. I will admit to part of it being satisfaction at no longer getting the "oh put your tinfoil hat away, no one would do that" response whenever it came up, which was always based solely on the old "I don't like the implications of this being true therefore it can't be" argument. It's also relief that there is finally a discussion about a subject that was previously only seriously discussed by a small number of people. I take your point that the I-told-you-so gloating isn't helpful and doesn't reflect well on those who do it but I disagree that that was ever meant to discourage discussion, if anything it was anger at the fact this discussion has taken so long to occur.
sixothree 13y ago
I'm betting tonight on the news, this story will be eerily missing.
qq66 13y ago
Room 641A?
phaus 13y ago
I've been hearing about the NSA's massive data center in Utah for well over a year, from public news sources. They have always suspected that it's main purpose was the warehousing of American's private communications.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
I'm one of those "none of this is new" types. The fact is, we ALL very much should have known. Do the words "Echelon" and "Total Information Awareness" ring any bells? These were terms being used pre-9/11. There is no excuse for someone technological and with a small inkling of understanding of human nature to not have seen all of this coming. There really isn't. If you're waiting for someone like Snowden to come along and spoon-feed you all the ways the government can screw you, you're doing things completely wrong. Oversight requires foresight.

by deveac 13y ago

davej 13y ago

> For all intensive purposes FYI, it should be "For all intents and purposes". :)

deveac 13y ago
Thank you davej, fixed. That mistake is hard-coded in me. It won't be the last time I make it.
- chakalakasp 13y ago
  Great Googly Moogly this place is friendly. Like Reddit with a +7 CHR and +11 INT roll.
  - cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
    It's great, isn't it? :) I'm just scared some day it will wear off, like the state Reddit seems to be in now...

rmrfrmrf 13y ago

First of all: keep the staggering to a minimum. Second: realizing that "we should have known" and "none of this is new" isn't so much about reading news articles and being "plugged in", but rather having an understanding of how the Internet works. To oversimplify greatly, you're essentially playing a very precise game of telephone between around 10-20 different people, and usually about 1-3 different publicly-owned corporations. To be surprised at the possibility of storing packets is somewhat naive considering how simple it is to do.

cinquemb 13y ago
Third: NSA whistleblowers have been stating what was more or less going on for years… (here's a talk by Binney from last November [0]) Funny enough, I wrote a post on this subject matter too before the Snowden leaks where I included the video as well…[1] [0]: http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/21783?html5=true&size=full&custom_width=432&player=simple&external_stylesheet= http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/21783?html5=true&size=full&cust... [1]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent http://blog.pictobar.com/post/47787766458/why-so-silent
kazagistar 13y ago
Maybe I am just having trouble seeing the point of "see I was right all along"? Why would we be upset at the newcomers to the ranks of the enlightened? I would prefer to just nod, point to the preexisting evidence, instead of driving people away with unproductive "I told you so" hostility.
- deveac 13y ago
  I agree completely. We need more education on the subject as opposed to back patting, and we definitely don't need to attack the very people that need to hear and understand the reporting most, as the person you are replying to is doing, by calling them naive. A bit sad imho.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    My issue with the conversation now that this has gone "mainstream" is that people are now allowing the media to shape their viewpoints (like everything else that seems to blow up in peoples minds who are normally distracted with reality tv or how awesome they think their life is[personal experience from family members/friends/how I lived for some time]), without digging further beyond what people are talking about at the surface. The emotions are most likely to be anger and disgust of having their sense of reality shattered, inciting most people who feel powerless to change their habits, to go and protest. And as we all have seen around the world and even within the united states, protests can get pretty hairy, pretty quickly and not in the favor of people who want to live peacefully… Outside of the issue of inciting the masses to act out physically, there is very little public "mainstream" acknowledgement that corporations are collecting and sharing the same types of data (and more) between one another, where issues surrounding any type of morality become selling points for products. So then the theoretical situation becomes: Government agrees to stop its dragnet programs, non governmental entities will continue to do so as long as people use their services… where's the protest for that (and when that comes they'll hire private contractors to protect them and their interests [remember OWS 2011])? I posted this a while back on information asymmetry and the surveillance state [0], which lays out simply what is going on now in the minds of people and what is at the core of the issue people are talking about. I also propose an idea about the direction I feel would be more beneficial for the energy to be placed on my post as apposed to the logical conclusion of where all the anger will be placed by people who are now willing to enter the conversation from recent "mainstream" exposure [1]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6042241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6042241 [1]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/52533760444/the-nsa-is-closed-source-were-open-source http://blog.pictobar.com/post/52533760444/the-nsa-is-closed-...

bmelton 13y ago

You're both right. If you read the PATRIOT Act, it's easy to look backwards and see that the things we're becoming aware of now are logical extensions of what was being asked for way back then. It is, however, VERY easy not to have been able to have that foresight, and I think that the insights people were expecting the government to have been constrained by the fact that all the information of value is collected by neutral third parties. Google, Yahoo, Twitter, etc., aren't likely colluders with the government. Plus, at the time of the PATRIOT Act's passage, there wasn't quite as much information being put on social media, or out to the public in general. Not as much was online, digital, or otherwise easily indexable. There were those predicting this sort of possibility before the PATRIOT Act's enactment, and since, to be sure, but you shouldn't feel responsible for not having seen the signs yourself, or for having heeded the words of what probably seemed like kooky overreactionaries from back in the day. The funniest part about this, to me, is that somewhere, very quietly, Richard Stallman is quietly telling us all the he told us so, and he's absolutely right, and always has been. Neverminding that, he's largely seen as a crazy old paranoiac who we should respect for his IT knowledge, while having to forgive the rest of his eccentricities.

dclowd9901 13y ago
If Richard Stallman is quietly berating us somewhere, he can go fuck himself. Part of educating the masses is being a person who people want to listen to. If he failed at that, he's no better than anyone else, and perhaps far worse, because of all the lost potential.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Part of being intelligent and shrewd is listening to the words that people say, and judging arguments based on their merit. The idea that Stallman should go fuck himself for not dumbing down or tarting up the message enough for you to pay attention to him makes you the asshole, not him.
- bmelton 13y ago
  In my experience, telling people to do something hard (open source, keep privacy, etc.) in the face of a barely perceived danger (government is coming to get you) is kind of a hard message to get heard. Aside from that, I didn't mean to seriously suggest that he's out there passing judgement on us so much as I was attempting to acknowledge how hypocritical we are for having disregarded his message because of his eccentricities. I think your statement, that he should actively try to be more popular for us to care, is further proof of how wrong we are to be that way. In an ideal world, your response would have made a perfect satire of how Americans are likely to react in the face of the responsible elder telling us to eat our proverbial vegetables. That is isn't saddens me.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

> I'm a practically addicted news junkie ... More like a news sheep. The mass market news is and has always been 49% fluff and 49% lies. Comments from people who already knew what the NSA does are not "self aggrandizing". The are other-insulting. You should rightly be ashamed that you walk through life in a news fog of up-to-the-minute minutiae. Read books by retired insiders, talk to current insiders and contractors. That's the only way you will learn anything about anything. To wait for the newsmen to do it for you is to sign your mind over to tampon salesmen. The NSA story is staggeringly unimportant. Every government, many companies, and rather a lot of organized criminals run intel and counterintel operations. It is just a fact of life, like antibiotics and highway construction. It is inevitable that there must be a national American signals intelligence organization. What os staggetingly important is why the NSA alone, out of all the spy organizations, is being singled out for a comprehensive media war. The most likely explanation is that the Democratic Party needed something to distract from its pecadillos. The next most likely explanation is that a foreign government is getting themselves some payback. In any event, if you care about this non-news, you are just another mindless pawn.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
knowaveragejoe 13y ago
Wow, what a staggering misinterpretation of what the parent said.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Every time I post the truth about this NSA fiasco, I get: 1. Downvoted to oblivion by a hivemind, and 2. Somebody like you chimes in with a content-free emotional outburst. So exactly what did I misunderstand? The incontrovertible fact that this really isn't news? The fact that every history and exposé on the NSA has been saying this for decades? The fact that the NSA tried cramming the Clipper chip and key length restrictions down our throats to make domestic spying easier? For half a decade this was a weekly running joke on Slashdot that you had to have been living under a rock to miss. That the previous commenter claimed to be a "news junky" and then admitted that by news he means the mass media—a pack of tampon salesmen and political hatchetmen.

doktrin 13y ago

I think it's just a demonstration of complacency more than any actual knowledge on the subject. I've noticed it's invariably my non technical acquaintances who are the first to pontificate on how this is all somehow boring old hat.

weland 13y ago

> It has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine recently to see self-aggrandizing comments from users around the net about how "we should have known" and "none of this is new." I agree that "know" is a bit too glorifying. I propose "suspected". I don't find this surprising at all. Practically 99.99% of a normal user's Internet activity is centered on Facebook, Google (including Gmail) and a handful of other sites. The amount of data everyone is requiring in order to provide a service also includes pretty much anything you need in order to track someone. It's not news you need to pay attention to but some of the more theoretical aspects of networking in a second-year course.

LoganCale 13y ago
I have nothing wrong with people having suspected it for a long time, or even saying so. I suspected it for a long time as well. My problem is with the attitude many people seem to have once evidence confirming those suspicions comes out and they go on about how the evidence means nothing because they knew it all along. No, the evidence confirms their suspicions, which makes it incredibly important! Ultimately, whether they intend to or not, such statements end up making other people who are hearing about this for the first time more complacent about it because they come into the comments and see a bunch of people going on about how it's nothing new and therefore the new information is no big deal.

aasarava 13y ago

I share your pet peeve and I can only assume that the "meh, no big surprise here" response stems from two things: wanting to sound just as knowledgeable as the person who brings up the topic (despite not having any new information); and at the same time justifying their complacency about the issue.

kalid 13y ago
Exactly. That type of cynicism and one-upmanship is grating.
deveac 13y ago
>and at the same time justifying their complacency about the issue. A good theory, as I have an extremely difficult time imagining anyone in an activist (non-complacent) stance on this issue ever reacting like that to these revelations.

graycat 13y ago

From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc. Then back at HQ, can send the node what are essentially 'filters' to return 'alerts' and the associated content. So, point: As a system, it's quite obvious. As software, it's quite routine. And, from their description of working with anomalies, they are being just intuitive and elementary and not at all advanced or powerful. It would appear that a terrorist Internet user could do fairly well beating that system by using a proxy server also used by many other Internet users and also using a lot of strong encryption -- PGP used well might be strong enough.

rhizome 13y ago
From the slides, apparently a node in the system just connects at an ISP or peering site and grabs all the packets. Then they essentially 'parse' the packets to TCP/IP sessions, logical user sessions, e-mail messages, etc. See? No "direct access!" Google/FB/Apple's statements, totally reassuring.

commandar 13y ago

For me, personally, it's not about "look how smart I am" as it is genuine surprise that the story actually seems to be sticking this time. I'm glad that people are paying attention, but especially early on, it wasn't entirely clear that Snowden's leaks were substantially different from the leaks that have been coming out of the NSA for years that never got traction in the media.

yk 13y ago
I think the type of leak is substantially different, the other leaks were all somewhat hard to describe. The Snowden leaks have the names of well known companies in big menacing letters.

griffordson 13y ago

The traditional media is complicit. And it isn't some grand conspiracy either, they just share the same interests as the rest of the establishment, being part of (and/or owned by) the establishment themselves. There is good independent media that has been covering the story for years though. Here's a Democracy Now story from February 2005: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/10/no_place_to_hide_award_winning http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/10/no_place_to_hide_award... Democracy Now has an incredible archive on this subject too. Right now it starts here: http://www.democracynow.org/topics/nsa/7 http://www.democracynow.org/topics/nsa/7 Specifically, they've done some great interviews with previous whistleblowers: http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/william_binney http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/william_binney http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/russell_tice http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/russell_tice http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/thomas_drake http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/thomas_drake http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jesselyn_radack http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jesselyn_radack Other interesting guests: http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jacob_appelbaum http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/jacob_appelbaum http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/laura_poitras http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/laura_poitras http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/james_bamford http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/james_bamford

jjp9999 13y ago
Only when Jacob Appelbaum was at Wikileaks, they also allegedly stole people's data (through Tor networks). Assange has admitted it - http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/wikileaks-intercepted-private-communications-maintains-access-47274.html http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/wikileaks-intercepted-...
- griffordson 13y ago
  How is that relevant to the NSA story exactly? Are you saying that the Government vacuuming up any and all data it can, and granting internal and external analysts easy access to that data, is comparable to the owner of a private server analyzing the network traffic of their servers and networks? If you want to hold private server and network operators to a standard that restricts them from doing that you're going to have a bad time. And the purpose of Tor might be different than you imagine: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhatIsTor https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#WhatIsTor Or are you just trying to discredit Appelbaum, Assange, and/or Wikileaks? Also, is that your article? Should you disclose that? And is there any reason you linked to it rather than the original New Yorker article here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?printable=true http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...

freshhawk 13y ago

Is it self-aggrandizing? I suppose I'm one of those people. I was shocked by having this laid out as well but I really did just assume this was probably going on. It was technically possible, it was politically possible and it was financially possible. If I shared the worldview of the people doing this and been in the position to do this, I would have been itching to start this level of collection and data mining. I will admit to part of it being satisfaction at no longer getting the "oh put your tinfoil hat away, no one would do that" response whenever it came up, which was always based solely on the old "I don't like the implications of this being true therefore it can't be" argument. It's also relief that there is finally a discussion about a subject that was previously only seriously discussed by a small number of people. I take your point that the I-told-you-so gloating isn't helpful and doesn't reflect well on those who do it but I disagree that that was ever meant to discourage discussion, if anything it was anger at the fact this discussion has taken so long to occur.

sixothree 13y ago

I'm betting tonight on the news, this story will be eerily missing.

qq66 13y ago

Room 641A?

phaus 13y ago

I've been hearing about the NSA's massive data center in Utah for well over a year, from public news sources. They have always suspected that it's main purpose was the warehousing of American's private communications.

hackinthebochs 13y ago

I'm one of those "none of this is new" types. The fact is, we ALL very much should have known. Do the words "Echelon" and "Total Information Awareness" ring any bells? These were terms being used pre-9/11. There is no excuse for someone technological and with a small inkling of understanding of human nature to not have seen all of this coming. There really isn't. If you're waiting for someone like Snowden to come along and spoon-feed you all the ways the government can screw you, you're doing things completely wrong. Oversight requires foresight.