PRISM update | Hacker News Reader

PRISM update

thenextweb.com

88 pointsbrokenparser34 comments

Crazy to me that our government is capable of a monumental task such as filtering the raw unfiltered data stream into manageable information, but can't manage to get the VA to get benefits to soldiers in a reasonable time frame.

Priorities. Why would the government care about soldiers that are no longer of any use?

Pay Booz Allen billions a year the same rate as NSA does and you'll have it solved in a short time. of course incentives and priorities matter also (the soldiers have already done the fighting, so what's the rush might be the attitude.)

Uhhh, that post looks more like rampant speculation than an update on where things stand. Here are a bunch of primary sources of info that came out over the weekend instead:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/of...

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013306160046

https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/346414410945941505

None of those are primary sources, just FYI.

And from the second article (an op-ed by a Congressman):

>Neither program allows the NSA to read e-mails or listen to phone calls of American citizens.

This is blatantly false, and the Government has said as much. The entire article is a mixture of falsehood and slick (read: dishonest) reasoning.

The first link is more unsubstantiated than the submitted link.

And the third link is a tweet about what a Congressman said.

The only one that has any helpful information is the Washington Post article and it's just a statement offered without evidence.

In case you didn't know, primary sources would be things like internal memos, pictures, videos, etc that are related to programs like Prism. E.g., the evidence offered by Edward Snowden and not in any of the links you posted.

The evidence offered by Edward Snowden, that you have been able to see, says very little about actual capability. And without context, we don't even know if it describes current or proposed capability. We don't even know if it was created by an NSA employee, and not e.g. a BAH contractor.

So if we're going to be standing on some sort of epistemological high ground, let's make sure it's not quicksand beneath our feet.

>> "This is blatantly false, and the Government has said as much."

The government probably isn't the best source when making a decision as to what you think the program allows.

Why is such blatant misinformation voted so highly?

Because HN readers have largely been swayed by the endless "nothing to see here" commentary of tptacek et al.

That Twitter status has a lot of qualifiers

If they pull everything from undersea cables they must have all CA Certificates from all over the world to do the man-in-the-middle for encrypted connections.. plausible?

No, not plausible.

A CA certificate would allow them to forge a website certificate (and pull off the MITM), but the website owner would still notice - they would see that the hash number of the certificate they installed doesn't match the one the browser is looking at.

Most website owners would not notice, it's true. But some would.

How does this comparing of certificate hashes work? If the connection is plain text in the middle, can't the hash also be forged?

There is much information that is still unencrypted like unencrypted emails via standard SMTP or all the metadata for encrypted communications - like for example the list of websites accessed by a given IP.

Not very likely. CA Certificate generation is about as secure as the papal election (read one of the most secure proceedings in existence).

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9j-sfP9GUU

PRISM isn't the NSA's only project. They could can it tomorrow and then name this something else. Only with full unrestricted inspections by the UN can this kind of abuse be brought under control.

PRISM "provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes."

I am not too sure I want to live in this ugly world of ours. Staying alive feels like complicity with the evil.

Being alive is the best way to do something about it.

Whether the NSA is capable of rewinding this undersea data stream is an interesting question indeed. I had always thought managing that much information would be impossible, but now days one cannot be sure of anything.

What about the different dates Google, Facebook etc came into prism. Why would there be different dates if the government were just collecting raw unencrypted data?

Slurping raw data from one source gives them that raw data.

Slurping nicely formatted data from known sources gives them nicely formatted data that they can then cross-reference and use to help data-mine the raw data.

What would be the point of harvesting raw internet traffic when any half-intelligent person would be using an encrypted connection?

I wonder if we'll see a fracturing of the Internet. I live in Switzerland and I am already seeing reports in the news of companies moving/expanding data centers here. As someone that lives in Europe (but not EU thankfully) I will try to avoid sending too much info to the u.s.

yes, I know it's ironic that I'm posting this on a u.s. site.

And whats exactly the reason for the side blow against the EU? Oo

Most of the EU countries are in cahoots with the NSA (reportedly to get around pesky legal restrictions on domestic spying; don't remember if this was media speculation or shown to be true). Wouldn't be surprised if Switzerland is too.

Confusingly the EU has supposedly strong laws about exporting private data outside the EU.

ECHELON report from EU parliament showed that 5 countries (UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) were part of ECHELON and gave lists to each other as a way to avoid laws about spying on their own citizens.

That EU parliament report is very old now (pre 9/11) and there are a bunch of more recent laws that probably exempt GCHQ and others from these laws. But I could be wrong; I haven't kept up; and I welcome corrections. I have no idea what parts of RIPA (regulation of investigatory powers act, UK law) are enacted or not, and what exemptions it has for GCHQ.

Yeah I was way over reaching. I've given up on following the exact details of the NSA revelations and now I'm just enjoying the ride. It's probably safe to just assume from now on that I'm always being spied on and that I should stop looking at nuclear space propulsion papers.

Yea, it is unfortunate that the Constitution and similar were designed before it was easy to spy on other countries's communications.

The Constitution has built-in provisions for future modifications, i.e. the Fourth amendment.

And yet, not a single amendment has been enacted through an Article V Convention.

It's certainly true for Belgium.

> "Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC"

> According to the directive, member states will have to store citizens' telecommunications data for six to 24 months stipulating a maximum time period. Under the directive the police and security agencies will be able to request access to details such as IP address and time of use of every email, phone call and text message sent or received. A permission to access the information will be granted only by a court.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

I find your user name more ironic than you posting this on a U.S. site.

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