FBI’s Secret Surveillance Tech Budget Is ‘Hundreds of Millions’ | Hacker News Reader

FBI’s Secret Surveillance Tech Budget Is ‘Hundreds of Millions’

theintercept.com

49 pointsadventured10 comments

One could buy a lot of Tor nodes, 0-days, fiber taps, stingrays, and Storage Pod's with that kind of money. Wonder what they're spending it on. Anyway, last I checked, they were still spending top dollar on XTS-400's and cross-domain software (probably SAGE) to guard their bigger secrets. Cost them a few million a year. Remember that when they advise just using a good configuration of Windows or something to stop nation-states. It was fairly clear to me pre-Snowden, given their own security measures, that they were saying one thing and doing another for an unstated reason. Crystal clear now. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Trusted_Operating_Progr...

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.133...

A secure system that run X windows?

Possibly a modification of it or enforced through the security kernel. Look up Epstein's "15 years after TX" paper for example of older, secure X. Nitpicker GUI is a modern approach. Otherwise, they just ported old crap over due to customer demand with a warning to only use it in trustworthy environments. That happens too.

However, XTS-400's are usually operated in console mode as cross-domain solutions. These are like ultra-thorough firewalls with content scanning, assurance that OS resists hackers, and various covert/side channels plugged. Guards actually predate firewalls: a knockoff of guards that had less features and always (even today) less assurance of secure implementation. Defense sector still prefers guards on points where multiple levels, esp Internet and classified, connect. Although, even most guards are at weak EAL4 OS's now. (sighs)

$70 million in funding to "counter the threat of Going Dark".

https://www.justice.gov/jmd/file/822286/download

That much to pick on RMS? Wow!

Paid by the tax payer, used against the tax payer.

Now that the FBI has erected itself as the in-the-clear spying apparatus, you can likely kiss any rights you have today good bye down the road, if you're not a billionaire yourself.

Why do you think billionaires would be exempt? If I was the fbi or powers behind the fbi, I would be much more worried about an activist billionaire than an average person. If anything, the surveillance apparatus, it's for targeting the billionaires. People behind the fbi are not interested in going after small criminals who keep the people terrified and in need of the police.

Why do you think zuckerberg tapes the camera on his laptop ?

> Why do you think zuckerberg tapes the camera on his laptop ?

As a joke. Same goes for the tape on his mic.

Well there's a lot of iPhones, so at a million dollars a phone, it gets eaten up pretty quickly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com