N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
While arguably any foreign intelligence agency of note isn't going to be caught off guard by these leaks, leaking these details does offer political ammunition to the very people who stand to gain from the expansion of the NSA's mission into civilian data gathering. It helps to make the case that the leaks aren't such a good thing after all and are compromising the intelligence gathering apparatus of the US of A. Add a bit of spin and you can quickly use this to get back to business as usual and people will actually support them as now it'll become a matter of identity instead of what it should be - a surgical exploration of a cancer afflicting a nation state.
Why should members of 'foreign' countries be held to a different standard?
I think it's a little bit silly to expect discussions about these revelations to occur without discussion of politics. The issue is intrinsically political, and many people are calling for political solutions to the problems. By saying "can we please take the politics elsewhere" you are actually shutting down a very important avenue of debate.
Other NSA activities, especially where they have exceeded their mandate would be debatable, and possibly partisan. Much of the leaked activity could be argued to be not in the best interest of the nation.
(I'm Canadian, so while I couldn't claim to be neutral, I have a bit of an outsiders perspective. Not to mention, spying on me with such a device would be within the mandate of the NSA.)
news.ycombinator.com/y/programming
news.ycombinator.com/y/startups
Subcombinators :-)
Just wondering.
You also have a scroll {gesture, wheel, bar}.
I think you can probably take it from there...
I think the current system is fine, where NSA-related stories are (apparently) assigned a handicap to begin with. So those that make it to the home page are usually more significant pieces. And the best way to avoid the "debates" is to not read the comments (if that is what grates you) but just read the story. If even that's too much just read the headline, shrug at the needless brouhaha people are making about it all, and move on to the next news item.
I recommend filtering the entries about bitcoin and from Wikipedia.
I think some people see the NSA as fundamentally good and trustworthy, but perhaps exercising a little bad judgment and/or overreach. Others see their breach of trust as reason for grave concern and a flagrant abuse of power that merits our consideration that it may be the tip of an iceberg inadvertently revealed by a rogue agency.
Where people fall on that continuum probably drives their responses to subsequent revelations more than anything.
You effectively state that the leaks aren't such a good thing ipso facto, then you go on to say that leaking these details proves it; thus they shouldn't be leaked. Kind of hard to find where that argument begins and ends.
I know where your thinking is going, but you would first have to establish the NSA's trustworthiness to get there. That is exactly what is in question and, importantly, for legitimate reasons.
Is this information something the public needs to know, because it tells them something important about their democracy, or would releasing this be an ironic hindrance to the common public interest?
That's how I read it anyway.
IMHO, the public should know everything its government is doing on its behalf. A more appropriate question would be how long the government is allowed to keep its secrets.
I don't dispute that there is definite realpolitik value in keeping secrets when trying to achieve short-term gains. However defaulting prevents that society in the future from determining if your actions were just when done in their name. Every time a politician acts in the name of myself and my fellow citizens, it reflects on me. On the other hand, I and my fellow citizens voted that person in to get things done on my behalf. The eventual publication of all governmental secrets keeps governments honest long term. After aboute ~10 years, a secret poorly received when made public after the fact no longer reflects poorly on the current officials in government (unless those responsible are still involved in government). What it does do is allow society to have a debate about whether they approve in hindsight of a government's actions.
If the government wants to keep a certain category of secret indefinitely, it should specifically ask the public if they acquiesce via a majority vote. A future public should be able to overturn that vote and make something public. Unilaterally affording government officials the right to make things secret indefinitely is a path to tyranny. The truth keeps governments honest.
Does such a policy put a country at a disadvantage when competing against adversaries without such a policy? Yes, it does, in the short term, since any governmental actor must consider the potential for fallout when their actions/policies enter the public domain. On the other hand, there are long term game theoretic advantages of holding your country to a higher standard. It establishes a basis upon which the population of other democratic countries judge their own government.
The US used to have this positive influence upon the World. There was a time when citizens of less free countries would look to the US and ask themselves, "Why can't my country be free like the US?". That question is no longer asked because we are no longer a guiding light for the world to follow, instead we've become the ship on the beach that has become the lighthouse to the sea.
Long-term, citizens the whole world over are going to be better off by establishing a precedence that everything their governments do in their name (from the local and state levels to the federal) will eventually become public.
Circular logic is the C of politics.
It was a weak analogy anyway.
I suppose the NYT could argue that this article only reiterates what was previously reported on the ANT program, and the technology disclosed in that report is over 5 years old. Still, this article may get more attention because when ANT was previously reported the media (and much of HN) got distracted by the NSA's ability to jailbreak iPhones (in 2008!) and largely ignored the passive radio-based technology that was also described.
What they are, is a totalitarian control mechanism for American political and business interests to apply around the world.
So if you are on the 'American' side of this fuzzy, electronic wall that they have erected, and if you are an American who will do what is necessary to further American interests in the world - okay. The NSA is on your side.
But for those of us who do not live under the crux of American hegemony - and there are quite a few of us, after all - knowing about these heinous violations of human rights, and the tactics and technology that these totalitarians are using, is very important. We are not all Americans, here, nor do we all derive profit from American military-industrial efforts.
To some, the NSA is a heinous, despicable construction. I, for one, am glad to see leaks around this organization; as I am with any leaks that will reveal the truth about the tyranny we all live under.
And just saying 'others do it too' isn't enough to weasle out of the fact that the USA spends far, far, far more energy and effort on establishing its tyranny - militarily and technologically - than any other country.
Fact is, 'others' would like to live in a world where we don't have to deal with secret injections at the whim of a politician in our lives. Some of us would like to build companies to compete with the American hegemony, and some of us would very much like to reduce the power that the military-industrial tyrants currently ruling America have over the worlds' population. We're not happy having to deal with American pixy-dust solutions to the problem that they're not in control ..
http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-is-one-of-the-nsas-9-eyes.761...
>Some of us would like to build companies to compete with the American hegemony
And you think the NSA is stopping you, well I don't know what to say to that.
And you think the NSA won't interfere, should I start up a company that will compete with the US? They sure will. This is why there is such heat on this subject, duh .. why compete with the American Industrial Spook Empire, if they can inject code into your systems, remotely, without detection. If they can inspect all the packets, wherever. If they decide, after I become successful at something that might impact an American-Industrial Giant's applecart, to use my neighbours router to hide their destruction of my business?
Screw that. I don't want to hear an excuse - I want to hear a solution, from our American friends. Damn right I want a revolution!
At the end of the day it's the newspapers who decide what gets published.
Are you really suggesting that your country's intelligence service doesn't attempt to do the same?
My problem ultimately, as a Brit, is that it seems that we are more and more becoming a satellite of the US, bound by US law and ideals we never ever voted for. We had a referendum on the EU, but never a referendum for all this. But of course that is a British matter and not something the US should be concerned with. If we Brits want to suck up to the US, why would the US turn it down?
I think that what has happened is a nasty mission creep with regard to intelligence. Its used to be all about threats to a given country. The basic point was to understand the intentions of one's enemies. This was and is vital in preventing mistaken action based on not knowing that an enemy has no plan to, say, invade, or what ever. It was based on the idea that knowledge helps prevent paranoia and fear. All of which is not just OK, but vital. It is why in the cold war, both sides accepted this in a gentlemanly way. Both knew it was vital to both to stop both nuking each other. If the USSR said it would not start a war, the West could verify that by spying and have confidence. And vice versa. Now it seems that a lot of it is about gaining advantage in commerce, and local law enforcement. Its fine to say that the NSA has nothing to do with this, but we know that they give access to the FBI and police. We can reasonably believe that its quite possible that the NSA also gives intelligence to large businesses like Lockheed. What has happened is that economic and local criminal issues are now redefined as matters of national security. The lines have not just blurred, but completely crossed over, perhaps gone completely.
As a result, I think we need to re-examine the role and scope of intelligence gathering. Spying needs credibility. And yes, there is a severe danger of throwing out babies in the bathwater. But ultimately, if the people lose confidence in intelligence gathering, we are in a whole lot of trouble. It is vital to get the balance right.
Targeting "all foreigners" destroys trust that foreigners have in the USA system for trade and diplomacy, lowering the impact of the state on both.
In the entire human history of diplomatic relations, nations have always attempted to spy on one another. Diplomatic relations are not based on trust, they are based on shared beliefs, interests, and goals.
This is not such a naïve viewpoint as you may think since I would expect it to be the average of the viewpoints that many Americans held about its own government up until a year or so ago. To most Americans, a year ago the NSA didn't spy on US citizens, not did it eavesdrop on the communications of the leaders of its own allies.
If you asked the typical American a year ago if s/he believes that their government spies on the leaders of our allies like Angela Merkel, you'd probably get an overwhelming negative response. If you continued your line of questioning and asked if it is acceptable to for the US government to do so, you'd probably get mixed responses. If you then went on to ask if it would be acceptable for the German government to spy on president Obama and other US politicians, you'd probably get a reaction where US citizens would consider that an act of war.
The truth is that many US citizens hold very very very different opinions of what is acceptable than those in the intelligence community.
I don't know about you, but the simple fact that such a wide disconnect exists between what citizens collectively think about how their government is operating and how it actually is operating is a fundamental failure of how our democracy currently functions. Leaders in a democracy should have a legal obligation to work to keep their constituents as best informed of how they are actually doing their jobs and attempts to hide or be less than honest about their activities should be viewed as attempts to subvert democracy. Anything otherwise, prevents I, Joe Q. Citizen, from honestly and effectively exercising my right to vote. If such policies mean non-American leaders will have a greater insight into how our politicians are acting in foreign policy negotiations than our leaders have about those non-American leaders are acting, that is the cost of being more ethical. Ideally that disadvantage is made up for in the long term by establishing a norm of greater ethics that those leader's citizens expect them to meet.
If a citizen votes based on lies and misinformation, are they really participating in a democracy?
The citizen will always vote based on (US or not) (a/dis)information in the sense that every government has secrets. The key is maintaining a state where the secrets are not destructive to the underlying society that supports that given government. I am not entirely assured that the US has achieved that, however I do not think (betting man here) that we have fully failed that.
Downvote if you must, but there is a not small tragedy in verbally damming the deeds of those whom we literally paid to do it in the first place (spying on Americans not included, more referring to the foreign targeting referred to in the parent article).
Yes, and it's all bad. I don't see what's naive, or even controversial, about this.
And those of us who do not like the actions of our governments can leave. In fact, we do.
So don't think this 'high road' of "you did it too" is going to absolve you of anything. We all leave the playground, eventually.
If the NSA can commit crimes abroad, they can commit crimes at home.
No wonder, when you don't belong to "gods own people", isn't it?
Meanwhile, everyone, US and others alike, needs and is rightfully entitled to secure communications (in a moral sense, not to be confused with the laws of particular states). Unless there is some guarantee that the methods exposed could never be used improperly, exposing them is a vital public service.
So I think it is valid for victims to be made aware of the tools their enemies in the security services are using against them.
Why is anyone upset? I don't know, people don't want to be spied on? Hmm, yes, that may be the case here.
Do you really think that the US is unique in spying? or that the scale is even unique? Pro tip: if you do you're wrong.
I tend to think that leaks like this one may weaken the overall view towards the Snowden leaks. As far as I can tell from reading the article it's a tool that's used in specific cases, and likely has value in that capacity.
Nobody with an unspoiled mind and following the news last year will believe this bullshit.
If there is anything, people all over the world (also in the US) should have learned: Statements from people of some federal US organisations can not be believed at all -- in many cases the complete opposite is true.
A little chip (inside the motherboard/CPU/hard disk/graphic card) with a radio module that can receive radio signals and write the received data directly into hard disk and/or RAM or read bytes from the hard disk and/or RAM and/or graphic card and transmit it back.
This is why I have always been cautious about those who advocate personal cryptography as a privacy solution. We need clear laws, first and foremost, to reign them in. Otherwise, we are effectively saying that if they can get it (i.e. decrypt it), it is fair game. Cat-and-mouse is not a game we want to play with the NSA.
Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. Laws are what constrain our government and what confer and protect all of our rights. Why should this be any different? Why should we suddenly abandon law here in favor of some (inevitably inadequate) technical scheme? It is naive to believe otherwise and it is more naive (catastrophic) to advocate a model wherein we do not rely on laws, but instead our personal capabilities to protect our rights from our own government. Advocating encryption over laws is just one example of that.
Protecting ourselves from the government with tech is a tempting, freedom-figthting technologist's fantasy. We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits. Why on earth would we abandon the law and position ourselves to play cat-and-mouse with the U.S. government?
"We cannot even duly protect ourselves from zero-day exploits" - well that's definitional, isn't it? It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
Of course it has, unless you believe that all of our rights in the U.S. are a sham, and are routinely violated in private by our government. No, it's not perfect and it never will be as long as humans are involved. But, there have to be definitions of right and wrong with associated penalties--in other words, laws.
>well that's definitional, isn't it?
That's my point. These things still exist. The fact that we continue to battle one-off hackers, groups, etc. and frequently lose should give us pause to consider whether this is really the cat-and-mouse posture we want to assume with the U.S. government.
>It's hardly a reason to give up on trying to protect communications from "big brother".
I don't have anything against taking prudent measures to protect our privacy in general. But, this idea that technical solutions will ultimately protect us from "big brother" is pure folly. Without the law on our side, we will lose.
I wonder if technology now can tweak and coordinate the multiple existing radios (Wifi, bluetooth, GSM/CDMA/3G/4G etc) on phones and computers to deliver the same result.
Is that possible? Would that require changes in silicon or could it be done with baseband software changes or even above that? I have no idea frankly.
I seem to recall a strong opposition by the government to the development of consumer ultra-wideband radios. I wonder if this was part of the reason. Either way, it looks like some applications of UWB are available now, though, such as wireless HDMI.
(TOP SECRET etc.) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/NSA_COTTO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog
http://www.realvnc.com/products/viewerplus/
"Computers with particular Intel® Core™ vPro™ processors enjoy the benefit of a VNC-compatible Server embedded directly onto the chip, enabling permanent remote access and control. A RealVNC collaboration with Intel's ground-breaking hardware has produced VNC Viewer Plus, able to connect even if the computer is powered off, or has no functioning operating system."
I sure didn't know about it, and wish I did. I'd love to be able to use it!
Is there any easy way to make this work (and to check if your computer supports it)?
http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/2011/10/using-intel-amt...
EDIT: and some more current stats
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/04/23/intelr-vpro...
(Note that 4Watts of 27Meg CB radio is well known for getting ionospheric "skip" and connecting over literally thousands of miles given the right conditions.)
If you have a huge antenna, a fraction of a watt in the shortwave band will easily get you across the country.
But presuming not shortwave and no particularly special antenna, a watt or two might do it.
For reference, cellphone radio signals are on the order of a watt or two, and they have no trouble reaching cell towers a mile or two away; maybe more.
This comes from my ham radio background and some of my individual experimenting.
edit: I know the article mentions wireless, but it might not be true after all
I think most US citizens would be okay with affording the NSA rights to secrecy if those in the NSA had shown themselves to be exemplary defenders of the US Constitution.
Instead, they have demonstrated themselves as the most formidable opponents to the US Constitution, and more specifically the Bill of Rights. Our national security means nothing if the principles upon which the nation is founded are being debased wholesale. The US without the Constitution is not a nation, since the Constitution is the foundation of the shared history and government of the 330 million people that call themselves Americans.
An NSA that does not respect the Constitution is the greatest existential threat to national security this country has faced. An organization with the capabilities of the NSA with no real oversight can unilaterally subvert even the healthiest democracy.
Of course, neither of us can prove anything either way, but context is necessary before making analyses like yours
How about a shift in your thinking: Instead f "securing" ourselves through trillions in weapons and intel BS - why not work toward creating a better world through better systems and people?
How many Norwegian terrorists have there been?
Fuck the NSA.
Adding more security will make our life less and less secure. Anybody who believes, such things will stop terrorism, is just dreaming.
At least two since 2011.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2467047/Terror-suspe...
If this is true, than releasing this information may be seen in a different context.
I actually think they have mostly done a good job. I think this story, and the previous one on TAO from Der Spiegel, are substantially different to the other stories that have been run from the leaks.
I do think there is an argument that these kind of details weaken security, and it's far, far less clear cut in my mind that the public interest argument outweighs the security argument in this case.
If you believe it does not that isn't a belief I would challenge - but blame the journalists who have made the wrong call, not Snowden. Deciding which 0.1% of the 100,000 documents to leak is their job.
I have a better idea: the US should stop interfering in other countries and violating people's rights - then it wouldn't have enemies.
However, I now know more about what DARPA's littlest flying robots will be doing, especially the ones already described as little more than chips with wings.
Pretty frightening that such things apparently still need to be said.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6646936
"Mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps?"
You gotta remember that there's two sides to any radio system: the transmitter and the receiver, and both determine what you can do. After all, with the right antenna on one side, you can use wi-fi over a distance of miles.
Obviously if someone has physical access to a machine it can be compromised. Replace "USB Cards" with "USB WiFi stick" and you've achieved the same thing.
This is just FUD. Machines that are air-gapped from the Internet with tight physical security are as secure as ever.
"The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers."
Oh, so they only need physical access to the machine, and then they can do stuff to it? It's like magic!