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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

> how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are

Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least. Have we really not learned anything in the recent years, that we're still unsure about such basic questions? Imagine the KGB at its peak activity, bump it up by a few orders of magnitude, and you have the NSA. Man, despite everything, the US is still really good at brainwashing even its most tech savvy citizens.

> I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them

I think you're greatly overestimating "the easy of identifying them", and how much the average AT&T employee knows/cares. Things are also probably much better hidden now compared to 2006.

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I have worked in telco and had to fix an issue with a circuit once, so ended up auditing the in/out circuits to which I found a few that were somewhat undocumented and further enquiry was basicly, you do not touch those. reason for auditing was issue with video link and was looking for a spare circuit to negate a older bit of kit that I suspected of inducing the odd bit error. Which for networking is not going to be noticed but for video, visually impacting. This was about 20 years ago.

Let us not forget that many a spare fiber was laid in the internet boom, unused and classed as dark fiber. But in government and telco's of the time and to this day you will find no single person working on the entire network to the stage they deal with there part and somebody else deals with there part. you can easily end up with unnoticed and ignored links for security.

What I'd be interested in is what about Russia, China and other countries, so much about the NSA and yet more is known how they operate in contrast to other countries security collectives.

But kinda gets down to presuming they see everything and with that, more right than not.

> Dozens, if not hundreds, in every major US city at the very least.

That's the most paranoid thing I've read in ages.

NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance.

So weird then, because thats exactly what they do....

The terms "foreign" and "domestic" are meaningless in the context of the world wide web.

> NSA's job isn't domestic surveillance

We've known since 2013 that is certainly is.

GP hasn't gotten the memo. Instead of "paranoid fantasy" now they're supposed to say "nothing new here; intelligent people have known about this for decades".

It's really not: https://www.nsa.gov/about/faqs/sigint-faqs.shtml

Well, I guess that settles it, then! There's no way their job is broader in scope than what they publicly say. I'm convinced.

Where have you been the last few years?

I'm usually not this snarky... but seriously... it's fact NSA operates an enormous surveillance infrastructure within the US borders targeting US citizens.

That is not debatable.

What may be debatable by some, is whether or not it's legal/constitutional/moral... but you are not making that point.

You're right that it is not debatable. It's simply false. There is no evidence that supports your claim of the NSA operating enormous surveillance infrastructure targeting US citizens. The one program that Snowden leaked that included US citizen data (phone metadata) has since ended, and the way that metadata was queried according to Snowden's leaks does not constitute surveillance.

You'll never win with facts, unfortunately: the only things that sway this crowd are half-truths, falsehood and innuendo.

Just to throw in my anecdote: when touring a local datacenter some years ago one of the principals pointed out equipment cages they claimed were rented by the NSA. The facility wasn't the local carrier hotel, but did have a large number fiber loops into it, enough that peering with virtually everyone was trivial. It would be a reasonable place to duplicate and sift through traffic that goes out over a number of pacific undersea cables. It's also entirely possible the principal was telling a tall tale.

In any case I think given all that's been disclosed over the last 10 years it's more reasonable to assume over-collection than under-collection.

Undersea cables go to other nations, and thus aren't domestic.

The idea that NSA has 'dozens, if not hundreds' of devices 'in every major US city,' regardless of utility for foreign intelligence, is just rampant paranoia, not much behind claiming that the lizard people are eating our brains while we sleep.

I would love to downvote you; sadly, I can't yet.

Why? Snowdon's leaks and the law show that he is correct.

Interestingly, Android autocorrect replaces Snowden with Snowdon. No idea why Android has Snowdon in its English dictionary.

Snowdon is the highest peak in the UK.

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