Snowden says that he had "the authorities" to wiretap anyone -- even the President.

[pnwmom]

Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2013, 08:40 PM - Edit history (1)

And that "any analyst" can target anyone.

(Although later he acknowledged they might not be able to target "everything.&quot

Do you believe all that? Do you believe he himself could have shut down the whole US security system in an afternoon?


If you don't, does it affect his overall credibility or not?

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/29-Year-Old-NSA-Whistleblower-Makes-Mindblowing-4590125.php

At one point he says: "I had full access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world."

Earlier he claims: "Any analyst at any time can target anyone ... I, sitting at my desk, certainly have the authorities to wiretap anyone — from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President."

And around the 10:30 mark, he makes the shocking claim: 'If I had just wanted to harm the U.S., you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that's not my intention."

[msanthrope]

1. He makes some grandiose claims. His affect, coupled with the

claims, and the lining of the hotel room with pillows and the red hood indicate someone who seems very stressed.

He is being treated for epilepsy, apparently.

[NightWatcher]

2. They said he worked there for 3 months

And he had the kind of access he is claiming???

No one can get that deep that fast NO ONE!

[Recursion]

40. Well, he isn't saying he had that capability at Booz Allen Hamilton

He's saying he had that at some point in the past at the NSA.

[giftedgirl77]

3. He's full of crap

Intell doesn't work like that. Especially when it comes to US citizens or even individuals suspected of being US citizens. That includes here & abroad.

You can't even shut down a basic network with the flip of a switch, do you really think a mid-level (if that) employee would have access to shut the whole thing down?

The more this guy talks the less credible he sounds. All he has given so far is a slide that they give to all new recruits & a warrant. Nothing of which supports his big claim of terrible wrong doing by the big bad man.

[warrior1]

4. impossible to do something like that wouldn't send off bells a whistles.

Even an analyst would be monitored. They would know ever keystroke Edward made. He's full of shit.

[OilemFirchen]

15. That's an ironic twist, innit?

The all-seeing all-knowing NSA can listen in on any conversation, anywhere, at any time.

Yet this freshman NSA computer analyst can steal a secret NSA doument and go undetected.

[BlueStreak]

87. I don't see that connection.

If they are focused on monitoring everyone else, it is entirely plausible a certain hubris overtook the organization, making them sloppy internally.

[okaawhatever]

89. He was supposed to be in networking and the "repair" side if you will. I got the impression that he

had access to so many different computers due to that. You can tell me if that seems right to you.

[treestar]

5. That's not true

If they could do it, they could not use any evidence in a prosecution.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

6. As Manning's case has demonstrated, if you have the access, the capability is there

since EVERYTHING, apparently, is being recorded and warehoused.

As someone who makes their living in IT, I know this is true, especially for systems administrators... if you have root, you can access anything on the server.

[pnwmom]

9. He says he has "the authorities." Do you believe that? n/t

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

17. I believe as a system administrator with 'root' access he has access to much more info than anyone

[randome]

10. I doubt the NSA's computer systems are anything like the ones you or I use.

[hr]
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[hr]

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

16. Then they would have a lot of trouble finding people to run them

[AnalystInParadise]

50. You would be surprised then

the Army's foremost Analytical system DCGS-A, the one Manning used, was running on Windows.......Most intel work done today is with off the shelf software and hardware, the differences are in the interfaces, that is what has to be learned.

[maxrandb]

19. All Manning's case proves

is that he was placed in a position of trust, and decided to download and dump a bunch of classified material "illegally".

I'm a career military person, and there are ways that he could have brought these documents to light through the proper channels, but instead, he decided to just violate the security of the nation. A security he was bound by law and oath to protect.

Why some want to make this guy into a hero is beyond me.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

26. is that seemingly low level worker bees can have access to a lot of data

It does not matter what you think of the individuals who revealed the wrong doing of our government, what matters is how we are to deal with this information now that we have it.

[Major Nikon]

79. That's a big if

Where I work there is only one employee who knows the root password. A second employee knows the combination to the safe which houses a sealed envelope which contains the root password, to be used in the event the first employee isn't available and an emergency occurs.

I can't imagine the NSA having less security than the network where I work. Certainly there are networks out there where all sorts of people have root access, but they are not what I would call secure facilities.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

105. no it isn't, root is root, and traditionally, sysadmins have root

sounds like you work for a very small outfit, especially when compared to the U.S. gov.

[Major Nikon]

111. I work in a high security environment

Inside a very large outfit. I'm pretty sure the government is going to use the same, if not much more rigid procedures, especially NSA. The biggest threat to computer systems comes from within.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

114. if there is only 1 root password for your entire outfit

i can tell just by that that it is relatively small, I didn't say anything about it's security.

the other thing is, in order for information to flow to as many people as it does globally in the U.S. gov you need a lot of systems, which require a lot of people to manage them, which also requires a lot of people with root.

ever wonder how a private like manning had access to so much classified info?

[Major Nikon]

124. I didn't wonder about it at all

Manning was an intelligence analyst who worked in Iraq. He had access to exactly what he was supposed to have access which makes up for much of what he leaked. As far as the rest of it goes, that simply demonstrates how loose the military is with such things. I was in the military for 10 years. Anyone who thinks the military uses cutting edge equipment and techniques probably hasn't spent much time in the military. Most of what you see is outdated, and the same goes for their procedures.

Government agencies typically have multiple networks. They will have a less tightly controlled administrative network that ties all their employees together, and they will have smaller secure systems dedicated to specific tasks, tied together in varying degrees by secure networks. When you parcel secure systems out in the field, as the government often does, it becomes easier to narrow system admin access to very few, if not one person.

From the looks of what this guy revealed (a powerpoint presentation), my guess is that whatever he got, he obtained from their admin network and probably wouldn't have needed a very high clearance to get it.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

126. I'd say you would be wrong

[HipChick]

7. He's not credible...without going into details..

It's not as easy as all that..

[Major Nikon]

90. I agree

[woo me with science]

8. That's taken out of context.

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail."

http://www.policymic.com/articles/47355/edward-snowden-interview-transcript-full-text-read-the-guardian-s-entire-interview-with-the-man-who-leaked-prism

Always better to read the actual interview.

[randome]

11. Sounds like he contradicts himself in short order.

[hr]
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[woo me with science]

12. No.

I think he's clarifying.

[Major Nikon]

95. If that's true...

Then he's saying that all analysts can target anyone, but that they may not have access to everything. In other words, any analyst can target anyone, but they may be limited on what data they get. This is pretty much what the OP said.

[pnwmom]

13. Do you believe that Snowden himself "had the authorities" to wiretap the President? n/t

[woo me with science]

20. I have no reason not to,

but, frankly, I consider your question as much of a disingenuous distraction as your pathetic OP about a tiny campaign contribution.

The critical issue here, which you and others are desperately attempting to deflect, is the massive, unconscionable surveillance program targeted at American citizens by our own government.

[randome]

22. Other than the fact that only non-Americans are targeted...sure.

Where is the evidence that Americans are being spied upon?

[hr]
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[Luminous Animal]

28. Ssh. that's a secret.

We certainly saw that Americans were being targeted with the Verizon leak.

[morningfog]

38. Where is the evidence Americans weren't being targeted?

Verizon included all their US customers.

[randome]

48. Can't prove a negative.

The way I see it is like this. And I have no knowledge of computer systems in use at the NSA but I'll put this in a PC frame of reference.

Say Verizon keeps all its data on a detachable hard drive. The NSA wants to search for calling patterns. Verizon can't very well only pull the numbers from the hard drive that might fit the pattern because no one has examined the data yet.

So Verizon hands over the hard drive, NSA analyzes it and pulls out only those numbers that match the pattern they are looking for.

Yes, technically, 'innocent' numbers are on the hard drive but that's just a byproduct of the Information Age -everything is stored in one place and is easily transportable.

I see much of this controversy as stemming from how we are still finding ways to cope with the fact that so much data can be stored on very miniature disks.

Big Data in Small Places.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[morningfog]

49. Clearly, we need more leaks. I mean that in all seriousness.

This seems like the tip of the iceberg, especially judging by Obama's and others reactions.

[woo me with science]

46. Don't be disingenuous.

The Atlantic: A privacy scholar explains the recent news about PRISM and government surveillance
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/prisms-legal-basis-how-we-got-here-and-what-we-can-do-to-get-back/276667/?google_editors_picks=true

The US government is collecting the phone records of millions of US customers of Verizon under a secret court order
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

[randome]

56. How would you search for calling patterns without looking at all the numbers?

You cannot pull only the numbers you want because you don't know which numbers you want until you have run the matching program.

If what Verizon hands over is considered a 'black box', meaning only those numbers are pulled without anyone getting their hands on the data for any other purpose, then Americans are not targeted and 'spying' on Americans is not occurring.

Of course everyone could be lying to us. But you cannot search for call patterns without first having all the data available to run through the automated system.

[hr]
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[hr]

[woo me with science]

82. You looooooves you some police state; we get it already.

How pathetic and disgraceful this drumbeat of propaganda is.

[Luminous Animal]

18. The truth is buried in the ellipsis.

[woo me with science]

21. +1

[uponit7771]

23. Nothing material has changed with the extra words...and I still think he's FOS

[backscatter712]

24. Ah, the OP embellished the grammatical error.

That shows desperation.

[Luminous Animal]

34. No the OP cited a bowdlerized quote.

Kind of like. Backscatter... "embellished"... "shows desperation."

[malaise]

14. Oh shite maybe we should send him to grammar school prison

I, sitting at my desk, certainly have the authorities to wiretap anyone — from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President."

[Luminous Animal]

25. You really should self delete because he didn't say that.

The truth is buried in the ellipsis.

[pnwmom]

30. Do you believe that HE himself had "the authorities" to wiretap Obama? n/t

[Luminous Animal]

31. If that is what this post is about, then you should edit the OP and substitute the correct quote.

Your title and the article is dishonest.

[pnwmom]

33. I did. Thanks for pointing this out. n/t

[Luminous Animal]

36. I guess, in some quarters. Half-assed is like a glass half full.

[AnalystInParadise]

54. I was juror 1

At Sun Jun 9, 2013, 08:48 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

I guess, in some quarters. Half-assed is like a glass half full.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2980163

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. (See <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus#communitystandards" target="_blank">Community Standards</a>.)

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

Name calling.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Sun Jun 9, 2013, 08:53 PM, and the Jury voted 0-6 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Close but not over the line. If I had to deal with a poster refusing to admit their mistakes and even in some instances doubling down on those mistakes, I might also become frustrated. In this case the person alerting might want to look at facts based argumentative styles.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Name-calling? Are you serious?
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: That's not name-calling. The post was characterized as half-assed, not the poster. Stop the incessant whining.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: Mild name-calling at best.

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[Luminous Animal]

75. Thanks!

[gulliver]

27. Were Greenwald and Wapo used by a fruitcake saying "cool computer stuff?"

That would be beautiful. The guy gets a hold of something essentially meaningless but deeply sourced. 'My gosh! A real court order secret document and spy decoder ring from a real nerd!!" He hands it to Greenwald and Greenwald goes gaga. Then the guy tells Greenwald he wants to go public. Greenwald shits self. Guy proceeds to tell the world how he could have wiped out our pathetic attempts at self-defense with a stroke of his pinky, but he let us all keep living out of the goodness of his heart.

Would be so damned funny. Wonder how our DUer hero worshipers would climb down.

[BeyondGeography]

88. This kid is looking like a total goofball

A libertarian determined to unmask our deteriorating freedoms seeks refuge in a Communist country. You can't make that shit up.

Yes, Hong Kong has a spirited democracy movement, but China runs the place and the region has yet to have an open election (that is supposed to happen in 2017).

As Josh Marshall put it, Iceland ain't happening and Snowden's best bet is that China will use him to stick it to the US:

He says in the article that his highest hope is get asylum in Iceland. I can pretty much guarantee you that that’s not going to happen. A small country that wants to be close friends of the United States is not going to do that. I could see arguments for Russia or Venezuela or perhaps Iran. But of all the places where you might have a shot at not getting extradited, China’s not a bad choice. Hong Kong might even give you the best of both worlds, hosted by repressive government which is a US rival and yet living in a city with Western standards of openness, wealth, etc.

But the decision to go to China inevitably colors his decision and sets up what could be a very uncomfortable diplomatic stand-off. I’ve seen people linking to the current US-Hong Kong extradition treaty. Call me naive but I think this is going to come down to how Beijing wants to play this. If they don’t want a fight over this, Snowden’s toast. If they like the optics of it, I don’t think it matters what that extradition treaty says. China’s a big enough player and the US has enough other fish to fry with the Chinese, that the US is not going to put the bilateral relationship on the line over this guy. And the Chinese might relish granting asylum to an American running from the claws of US ‘state repression’.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/06/whats_the_deal_with_hong_kong.php?ref=fpblg

[randome]

96. I consider Mr. Marshall to be very objective even when it concerns his chosen profession.

[hr]
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[aquart]

118. China? Communist? Nominally, maybe.

I'll believe it when they build the worker housing they need.

[Cha]

137. thank you for the link, BG..

Iceland! Wow, that's naive.

So let’s face it. Even though I’m tentatively willing to accept Snowden’s claim that he is doing this only because he thinks it’s right, he still seems to be hoping to evade the criminal consequences by defecting to China, a key US rival and one that comes up rather short of being the kind of libertarian and transparent society Snowden apparently believes in.

[flamingdem]

29. What is that condition with symptoms of grandiosity

Manic Depressive or something like that .. borderline

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

35. Actually he said there is the capability, since it is ALL being recorded, all he needed was an email

address, even the presidents.

That's how deep the rabbit hole goes... and anyone with the appropriate access (Like him being a sysadmin) could read their emails.

FYI

[pnwmom]

37. He said he had "the authorities" -- not just the capability. n/t

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

41. Yep, as a system administrator, he had the authority (e.g. capability, access) to read anyones email

since that is what the spy system does by DEFAULT, it collects ALL digital communications, both foreign AND domestic.

And that is why this is a BIG DEAL.

Got it?

[Luminous Animal]

42. If he had the authorities to gain access to anyone else's personal email

and IF he had the President's personal email account, why wouldn't he have the capability?

IF the President used a Gmail or Yahoo account, it would be no more secure than any other U.S. citizen's.

[backscatter712]

43. Basically, all he needs is to email for permission from his boss, and he just does it.

Let's translate from NSA-speak to English.

All he needs to point the Stasi-style surveillance machine at you is permission from his authorities. In other words, he just needs to email his boss, who clicks a checkbox on his computer to put his worker on an access-control-list giving him the ability to use particular surveillance tools, and voila.

Yep, that's a real check-and-balance that the Founding Fathers would see and beam with pride! Nothing says accountability like having to get permission from a supervisor!

[pnwmom]

47. And you don't think the President is protected from random analysts

deciding to wiretap him?

[AnalystInParadise]

52. No, he is not protected.....

Fucking Christ do you know anything about open source email programs?

[backscatter712]

59. I'm presuming the President's real communications are on secret, encrypted systems...

...designed by the NSA.

[Recursion]

60. Sorry, don't buy it. I administer sendmail clusters

How, for starters, are the connection logs allegedly getting from wherever they are to Ft. Meade in real time? That's not an amount of traffic you can hide.

[pnwmom]

62. Why do you assume the President would use an open source email program?

[AnalystInParadise]

64. I don't

n/t

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

58. actually, he didn't need to email anyone, he just needed the email address of the target

and he, as a sysadmin, could access the data collected against that email address.

see video around 3:00...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

His point is that EVERYONES communications are ceing recorded, and stored for EASY to access, at anytime, by anyone with the appropriate access/authority.

[randome]

39. And he couldn't just, you know, TELL someone about that? Talk to his supervisor, maybe?

If that was his only problem with the setup, then why does he 'report' it to the Guardian? He hasn't claimed he wasn't listened to, has he?

[hr]
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[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

44. He did. Nothing was changed. You Should watch the video interview with him...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

[randome]

61. I keep trying to but, honestly, it's a 12 minute love fest between Glenn and Snowden.

I keep nodding off! Can you tell me at what he point he says something about going to his supervisors? I'll try to watch the entire thing.

On edit: I'm sorry but I don't hear anything about his going to supervisors or doing anything other than 'reporting' to Glenn Greenwald.

[hr]
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[hr]

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

101. Mischaracterization of the interview, check the 1:00 mark of the video

he mentions talking about it the problems internally (Starting at the 1:00 mark) and being dismissed.

Makes me question your judgment, and comprehension skills.

[randome]

110. Okay, at about 1:37, he says "...when you talk to people about them..."

I guess that means he raised objections but I don't consider him very direct on that point.

He says it in a very casual way, almost glossing over it.

[hr]
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[hr]

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

112. Right, he says that he repeatedly brought these issues up, and he was repeatedly dismissed

[Luminous Animal]

45. His supervisor already knows that they have the capability to tap

into anyone's PERSONAL email account.

IF the President had a personal Gmail or Yahoo account, he'd be no more protected from data-collection than anyone of us.

[randome]

66. What makes you think his supervisor knows this?

I haven't heard anything on the video yet that says he tried to talk with anyone other than with Greenwald.

[hr]
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[hr]

[Luminous Animal]

72. You honestly don't think that the supervisors don't understand the capabilities?

[randome]

83. I don't think HE has the access he claims.

If he saw a problem, why wouldn't he talk to his supervisor? He hasn't even claimed to have tried that, from what I can see. Or use the whistleblower channels.

I can be convinced otherwise but right now he just doesn't sound authentic to me. I think he's misguided.

[hr]
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[hr]

[Luminous Animal]

91. Why would he talk to his supervisor about capabilities that are features not bugs?

[randome]

102. If it was as easy as he says, we would be inundated with blackmail schemes!

Which is why I think he's overstating things and exaggerating his importance. So I don't think NSA planned for everyone at the agency to have access to everyone's private information.

Still waiting to hear specifics, though.

[hr]
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[Luminous Animal]

104. Everyone didn't and he clearly states that.

[Recursion]

51. Ain't a big enough database in the world for that to simply be a query

And again, if he's the sysadmin, with the NSA's Linux contributions that doesn't give him access to data.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

53. well he and manning did have access to classified data, otherwise we would not be talking about them

nor would the president

[Recursion]

55. We have no idea what access Snowden had, other than a powerpoint describing the system

Why are you so inclined to believe whatever he says?

[AnalystInParadise]

65. If he worked for Booz Allen here

at a minimum he had a TS/SCI HCS clearance. Probably also had SI/TK caveats if he was working at the tunnel. If he had that, he had access to ALMOST everything in existence in the MI world. Not quite everything, but almost.

[Recursion]

70. So where is everybody else's access to this alleged instant tracking of the President's emails?

Also, no, not even close to everybody at BAH has HCS.

[AnalystInParadise]

74. Are we talking about Kunia?

or Smith? Because I work at one of the two and it is required to work in our SCIF. We all had to sign our NDA's and watch the stupid video when we started work.

[Recursion]

76. Oh, I missed the "here"

Sorry, I thought you were just saying if he worked for BAH in general. I've never dealt with that end of things; just NAVSEA.

[AnalystInParadise]

80. Ok, no worries

I work in Hawaii, not the same field or company as Snowden, but here yeah most people have HCS to work where we work.

[pnwmom]

63. He had access to some data, but he could be exaggerating about the extent

of his super powers.

[AnalystInParadise]

69. Please read

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

If he worked for Booz, he needed most of these caveats to do the job. Argue from fact please, the rest of us are doing that.

Or better yet: Use your vast intellect and knowledge of the Intelligence Community to tell me why he did not have access to this information.

[pnwmom]

121. You're not arguing from fact.

You're arguing from the same mash-up of truth and fiction that's been appearing all over the internet ever since this story broke.

No one knows yet what the true facts are.

[backscatter712]

68. It's the NSA. They throw 20 billion dollar sums around casually building new supercomputer centers.

Twenty billion here, twenty billion there, before long, you're talking about real money.

They get dedicated buildings the size of stadiums designed to house computers, special secret rooms installed in the switching centers of Verizon, AT&T, etc.

I think they've got enough IT assets to cause any computer geek's jaw to drop.

[Recursion]

71. It's getting the data to the NSA, and searching it, that's the problem, not storage

How do you hide about 20% of the Internet's traffic going to you?

I've deal with routers in very high-traffic datacenters, including ones used by Facebook and Google. How did they get the data out without my or any of my colleagues' seeing the traffic?

[backscatter712]

77. I presume you heard about the NSA's wiretap equipment installed at phone company switching centers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

They get the data right off the backbone, where all the switching and routing equipment already lives to send everyone's packets around. At that point, it's just a matter of copying packets and sending the copies down the secret lines.

[Recursion]

85. So they've got buried cables from Ft. Meade to every major datacenter in the country?

641A was revealed precisely because you can't hide that level of data transfer from the techs.

[backscatter712]

92. Dedicated encrypted lines aren't especially far-fetched.

The NSA certainly has the budget for them.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

78. second copy at a peering point, you never see it. straightforward.

[Recursion]

86. Not straightforward at all. OK, so you're leeching my router and have copied a packet.

Now get it back to you without my noticing.

How do you propose doing that? I do actually watch what happens with my routers.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

93. Here

Routers talk to other routers on the Internet with a protocol called BGPv4. Routes are exchanged between different autonomous systems (companies, more or less). This often happens at a "carrier hotel" where different companies keep big routers and WAN switches and connect to one another. All of your company's traffic goes through this point (and maybe one or two more, where the NSA also shares a room...however many BGP peers you have is the number of possible physical paths--not very many). The NSA sets up a SPAN port at the carrier facility and collects every packet going into and out of your ASN, without your awareness that its happening. That's it.

[Recursion]

97. BGP doesn't help you

I use BGP, so I know better. The frames have to get from point A to point B, and I can see what comes out of point A (I admined at a tier 1 for a few years). Are they teleporting?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

100. You said you knew routers. I took you at your word.

Do you know what a SPAN port is? When you've looked it up, think of one sitting at the carrier facility. It gets a copy of EVERYTHING. It doesn't give a shit about BGP and route selection and exchange. BGP just happens to be the routing protocol being exchanged. BGP knows or cares nothing about a SPAN port on a switch. But the SPAN port will get a copy of EVERYTHING, and you won't know ANYTHING. Any more teleporting questions I can help you answer?

[Recursion]

107. "When I've looked it up"

Whatever. OK, petabytes of information were going down some secret cable dug between Reston and Ft. Meade.

Two problems:

1. There's an invisible SPAN (NB: it's "SPAN", not "SPAN Port", nor is it "ATM Machine" or "PIN Number&quot on my router, which I built (some of them, at least).

2. There's an invisible cable coming out of my datacenter that I don't have accounting of

Sorry, it's a myth.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

113. Myth? I'll wager any amount if money you're ready to lose

I was nice the first post. I responded with a little snark to your. Teleporting comment, since it was born of ignorance. Now I'm telling you, you have no idea what you're talking about. Your regurgitation of what I said showed you lack a basic understanding of what I'm talking about. It could be you haven't worked in the industry in a number of years, or you never had occasion to peer with someone else or whatever, but you're lacking basic understanding. In simplest terms, the NSA would get the data AT ANOTHER FACILITY OVER WHICH YOU HAVE NO CONTROL. A SPAN port is a port on a switch that listens to EVERYTHING coming out of another port...like the port going to your business.

If you have a PRIVATE point to point connection from one location to another, sorry, that's not the Internet. But the same thing can be easily done in a carrier facility.

Don't tell me that all my years of network engineering are a myth when you're demonstrably clueless and people pay me good money on a continuing basis to have expertise in this exact area.

Any amount you want. Come to me. I'll set up the lab and let you SSH into it for a minimum wager of $500.

[Recursion]

115. What's the wager?

My wager is you can't get data from my network to yours without

1) My being able to see it, or
2) A physical connection of your own

You're saying you can?

Consider also, from Snowden's claim, the quantity of data we're talking about. I leave that out of the wager, but mention it again as the truly improbable part here. A literal second Internet's worth of traffic.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

122. I'll set up a lab network where you "own" router A and Router B.

I'll own the switch between you, playing the part of the circuit provider. You'll send data from a network behind Router A to a destination in a network between Router B. I'll capture traffic that you send while you look for some sign in your network that I'm getting a copy of your traffic--every packet between A and B. You can have CDP Information on the switch. ill let you see the config if you want, whatever. You'll pay me $500 when I send you the capture file showing every packet sent and received.

Even non-technical people reading this will easily deduce that if I have the machine between your two routers, I can pretty obviously get at the data.

I suggest snooper2 adjudicate this. He and I don't see eye to eye very often in the political arena, but I trust his truthfulness, and I know he's also a seasoned network engineer.

This is a very foolish bet for you to take, but I'll be glad to take the bet. I know of what I speak, and the setup is trivial.

[Recursion]

123. No, I won't take that. It's also not the situation.

If you're saying they have put a physical TAP (or, for that matter, even just a physical tap) between me and my peers, and handle all trafficking between those TAPs and their facilities, then yes, they could do that. Are you saying that's what the NSA has done? This is the sort of situation that you mostly just see in crypto textbooks as an absurd example (remember, they have to intercept TLS credentials to be able to read most of this stuff, too).

The PowerPoint slide the Guardian has talks about data coming from the servers themselves, remember.

Maybe I'm taking "anyone" and "anything" too literally here, but the amount of traffic that represents is mind-boggling, as well as the complexity, size, and power consumption of the private physical network NSA would have to have.

[Recursion]

125. Speaking of complexity, since you're familiar with BGP...

these taps will have to be between me and all of my peers, and you have to have one hell of a stitcher program to reassemble everything when my weights change and I start routing through a different peer in the middle of a TLS-protected stream.

Remember, he's claiming he can do this for any "private email address", in real time.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

129. Encryption is an entirely different matter, and out of scope

Fwiw, I think NSA can break SSL, but not in real-time. I'm assuming court orders come in handy in those cases.

What you're calling a tap takes the form of a switchport in today's infrastructure. No matter what kind of digital circuit you have, it's not at all difficult to logically associate another port with it, such that the second port can get a copy. This can be done on your point to point link, your MetroE link, serial links, frame relay, whatever. There do not exist any telco circuits that consist solely of a wire from one place to another. All circuits go through a variety of layer 2 and/or 3 devices, and where that happens, copies can be obtained, constrained only by the physical limitations of the router or switch. From that ointment, the NSA or whomever is vacuuming the data can just send it to storage, across the wire, locally, whatever. Presumably they also have advanced search, playback, and pattern matching software that makes the high volume of data more manageable.

As to the NSA's capacity, none of us knows. But we all do know about the mega data center in Utah. Someone will probably be able to extrapolate good guesses if they can figure out approximately how much power they're using. I do know that the NSA doesn't give a tinker's damn about how many 10GigE circuits they have to pay for on a monthly recurring basis. They've got tons of budget to work with. I don't know what capacity they're at now, but there's no real theoretical limit to how much capacity they can build.

[Recursion]

130. Ah, a common misconception

There do not exist any telco circuits that consist solely of a wire from one place to another. All circuits go through a variety of layer 2 and/or 3 devices

Ah, I thought as you did, once, until a line discipline failure it took us two weeks and three backhoes to find taught me a fundamental truth: There's always a physical layer, even when you're abstracting away from it. I mentioned teleporting because that's still the issue: you have to physically push photons and/or electrons down a wire at some point in this scheme, and that's where the idea becomes, at least to me, absurd. And, for that matter, there was just a big fat optical run between us and Cogent, now that I think of it.

and where that happens, copies can be obtained, constrained only by the physical limitations of the router or switch

OK, but over what actual physical media is the NSA getting a copy of everything being transmitted and received by everyone in the US from these compromised and/or clandestinely inserted intermediary devices?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

131. Yes, there obviously must be a physical layer

Else 2-7 would be useless. The fiber is immaterial too. Now, you may have some campus environment with a trench between buildings, and in that case, you can exercise full control over it, but any circuit going anywhere else can be compromised without your knowledge.

[Recursion]

132. I'm in agreement with you there

but any circuit going anywhere else can be compromised without your knowledge

I grant that in theory. I'm not buying the notion that there is a physical shadow Internet sending as much traffic as the actual Internet from every edge of the graph to ... somewhere, possibly Laurel, MD, possibly Hawaii, we don't know.

[Recursion]

120. Just to be very clear

Snowden is claiming that all traffic of the most popular protocols is actually being delivered, in real time, to Ft. Meade (or wherever the actual facilities are), with the full key management to decrypt it when necessary.

And this passes the smell test to you.

[backscatter712]

94. Do it upstream at the telco.

The telcos have people that know what happens on their routers, but the NSA has them sworn to secrecy.

[Recursion]

98. I am the telco (well, I was)

There's not an "upstream" of me, just peers. How did petabytes of data get out of my datacenter without me or any of the dozens of other techs like me noticing. Who fixes them when they break? How did they do that without our noticing?

[AnalystInParadise]

81. Five years ago, but these buildings replicate what is done in Maryland

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=31660

[KoKo]

67. If the "Kid" Bradley Manning could do IT...then ANYONE CAN...That IS THE PROBLEM!

The WHOLE DAMNED SYSTEM HAS GONE AFOUL!

All of US...of all Stripes of Dems and if there are any "Rational Repugs" need to JOIN TOGETHER and FIX THIS!

It's OUTTA CONTROL! We saw that under Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and it GROWS WORSE.

COME TOGETHER ...We've got to fix this OUTTA CONTROLS...Corporate/Media Industrial Complex" before it does Us ALL IN...

[wandy]

73. I don't have dreams of sugar plumbs dancing in my head. I have dreams of.......

being turned loose in the NSA's data center with the knowledge and authorizations I had the last time someone was so foolish as to give me free rein in their IT shop.
And he learned all of the in and outs in 3 months.

3 months. I'm impressed!

[Luminous Animal]

84. He worked for the intellegence community far longer than that.

Booz Allen was his latest gig for the NSA.

[wandy]

106. Ok. And it could have been a particular function..........

Some functions are 'plug and play', even important functions. If you know what you're doing, have experience, it's all good.
That is not always the case.

Maybe I'm a slow learner. With this latest scandal I still have more questions than answers.
So much new information all at once, and when I query that straw pile of a database in my head I find I've known about parts of it for quite some time.

I'm not even ready to question why even the timing of this scandal makes me smell a rat.
Or is it a Rove.

[moondust]

99. Doubt it.

Like everybody else, he would have limited visibility due to compartmentalization. He wouldn't necessarily know what kind of visibility anybody else had. For anyone but a top security manager to say that "any analyst" could do this or that would seem to be presumptuous.

I suppose it's possible that HIS company did not adhere to prescribed security procedures or something, which is another story.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

108. I don't, sysadmins typically have 'root' access.

And he did NOT say everyone has access to everything, he said anyone who had the right authority had the capability to read a target's communications, even an American's communications, since ALL communications by default are recorded and stored.

[moondust]

117. "sysadmins typically have 'root' access."

At least as far as you know in your limited experience.

Was Snowden a sysadmin? I thought he was an analyst. ??

Have you ever worked in an organization built upon the concept of need-to-know compartmentalization of classified information?

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

119. that's right, the system administrator has root access to the servers under his domain, otherwise

he could not administer the box.

I have worked at large networking companies and finacial and insurance companies, so I know what I am talking about.

Yes, Snowden was a sysadmin.

I have worked in the military, and IT, so yes, I know a lot about compartmentalization, need to know, and access control.

[Recursion]

127. Then surely you know about SELinux, right? The very system the NSA created...

... that means the root account doesn't actually have access to everything on the server (or, as Theo would put it, "isn't actually root&quot .

[HipChick]

138. He might have had sudo root...and his access could have been limited with that..

I doubt he is claiming what he had..period...except for the powerpoint slide..also DOD contracts for contractors don't pay that...so it will be interesting when this all falls out..

Booze Allen Hamilton will be losing a big contract here also..

[Recursion]

139. No, I'm not talking about sudo. I'm talking about role-based accounting

It's a way to keep root from having access to some subsystems. The NSA developed it and contributed it to the Linux kernel in 2003.

[HipChick]

140. Understood...all I see so far is this guy had access to a Powerpoint

[moondust]

128. Unless you have worked

in a high-level job on the NSA system in question, I don't think you can assume that you know how its security measures work based on some other experiences.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

103. Fishy

[Historic NY]

109. His 15 minutes will be up when the Chinese authorities cuff him...

and send him packing back to the US.

[Marr]

116. Your disingenuous smears are rather sickening.

The last one I saw was the Fox News-worthy 'did he support Ron Paul?'. No answer-- or even an outright accusation, come to that. And certainly no explanation for why that would make the information he provided any less true.

No, just a question. Just a harmless question, and a not-so-subtle urging for everyone to just move on shut-up and dismiss all future information on the subject.

And now this.

Just stop.

[uponit7771]

133. Worked for carlyle group subsidarary and tapped by winger to leak info that was already known

...so .... yeah, gonna not take this guy at face value

[Marr]

136. The same applies to yours. /nt

[Union Scribe]

134. Who cares?

This isn't about this guy any more than the issues from Wikileaks are about Assange and whether or not he's a bad guy.

You care if he has an inflated ego, I care that people are talking about these gross overreaches.

[pnwmom]

135. Because people are relying on his descriptions of PRISM that

appear to be false.

His credibility is very important here.

[Cha]

141. K!