skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The NSA doesn't require a signed court order for it's activities though. They're not allowed to spy on Americans (unless that American is communicating with a foreign person) at all. The FBI needs court orders, and is focused on Americans.

NSA is part of the Dept. of Defense, and there are lots of laws/rules/etc. that limit what it can do with US citizens.
Have you read the full WashPo article (all four pages)[1] ? - it goes into extensive detail of how it's used including "live surveillance of [Google] search terms" and access to Skype audio streams. It's obviously far more extensive than a request uploader.

Google have also specifically stated that they don't provide a "drop box" facility for FISA requests.

Further more the fact that slide 2 of the deck is about network traffic routing implies that it isn't just about FISA requests for which such information would be irrelevant.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence...
Non-tech people probably say the same thing about GitHub...
Boycotting US customers should be easy. After all, US companies have perfected the art of boycotting non-US customers...

Anyway, boycotting US cloud tech is not that hard, albeit a bit inconvenient in some cases. In many cases putting data within legal reach of the US government is simply illegal, so an entire market has sprung up to offer services that guarantee non US ownership and no data and services within US jurisdiction.

And this is just for the sake of regulatory compliance. In fact, it's probably the #1 selling point for non-US cloud services already. The NSA shitstorm is not exactly going to have a negative impact on that market...
I have always ridiculed those big European programs aimed at removing or limit the presence of google from Europeans citizens everyday life, but somehow, even if the European administrations can't manage software programs, their premises were right all along. Some friends were looking for providers outside of the Patriot Act because their customers would not accept US spying on their data, I was telling them I didn't really care, I was wrong. We might have to cut some links across the pound because our "ally" is turning less and less rational and he's massively weaponized, and take a sane route for ourselves (which is a big fight on its own).
Solving the mystery of PRISM
How NASA builds robust software.
The alternative is much simpler. Base the business in Europe or elsewhere outside the US. The US is a big and important market, but there is nothing preventing cloud services on the scale of AWS moving offshore just as manufacturing has and professional services are.

If it introduces latency and "credit card call center" style interface barriers, that doesn't mean it cannot be profitable.

There is a large market which sees itself as receiving no benefit from the American military-industrial complex as it is manifesting itself on the web. The laws which enable PRISM may place US companies at a disadvantage. PRISM affordance is not a feature in most people's minds. Indeed, it is a bug in many.
But unless you already know who they are, how do you get malware onto their machines? The Tor Browser Bundle has been carefully tuned to minimise attack vectors, so it could be quite hard for people who use Tor "correctly".
use another OS, http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cyanogenmod-will-never-have-...
If so, I want my Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Even if I have to sign it myself.
I plead lack of morning caffeine.

If a mod sees this, please fix.
Marc Ambinder (the author) posted a new article late last night which goes into much more detail: http://theweek.com/article/index/245360/solving-the-mystery-...

Each data processing tool, collection platform, mission and source for raw intelligence is given a specific numeric signals activity/address designator, or a SIGAD. The NSA listening post at Osan in Korea has the SIGAD USA-31. Clark Air Force Base is USA-57.

PRISM is US-984XN.

Each SIGAD is basically a collection site, physical or virtual; the SIGAD alphanumerics are used to indicate the source of intelligence FOR a particular report.

The NSA often assigns classified code names to the product of SIGADs. These can be confused with the nicknames or proper names of the collection platforms themselves, which may or may not be classified. What PRISM does is classified; the fact that there is a "PRISM" tool that does something is not.

...

So: An analyst sits down at a desk. She uses a tool, like PRISM, to analyze information collected and deposited in a database, like CONTRAOCTAVE. Then she uses another tool, perhaps CPE (Content Preparation Environment), to write a report based on the analysis. That report is stored in ANOTHER database, like MAUI. MAUI is a database for finished NSA intelligence products. Anchory is an intelligence community-wide database for intelligence reports.

---------------

And here is the core of it:

This is all very complicated, and that is on purpose. But this brief tutorial is important. PRISM is a kick-ass GUI that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types provided to the NSA from internet companies located inside the United States.

The programs that use PRISM are focused, as the government said yesterday, on foreign intelligence. A lot of foreign intelligence runs through American companies and American servers.

...

Now, these accounts are being updated in real-time. So Facebook somehow creates a mirror of the slice of stuff that only the NSA can access. The selected/court-ordered accounts are updated in real-time on both the Facebook server and the mirrored server. PRISM is the tool that puts this all together. Facebook has no idea what the NSA is doing with the data, and the NSA doesn't tell them.

So, PRISM is the name of the software application(s) used by an analyst that allows them to pull together all the various pieces of data that they receive from these companies, along with other sources, for their analysis.

Which of course, explains why the companies have never heard of this name. There is no reason for them to have.

And what the NSA has isn't necessarily "direct access" to the servers - PRISM gives the analyst "direct access" to the data that has already been collected by many different means.
I think the real question should be is there possibly a back door on your mobile os of choice, because it won't matter what app you use if your os is already capable of capturing that data system wide.
A secure text messaging app I like and use is Threema (http://threema.ch/en/index.html). All servers are allegedly located in switzerland. The app uses public-private-key end-to-end encryption.

You can exchange keys locally via QR code and it is available for both Android and iOS.

You can still sync your phonebook in whatsapp style. It's a good compromise between being secure and being pragmatic to me.

However, it's not open source, so you still have to trust the app (and the OS) not to send out your private key.
Thanks. Not really germane, but definitely a good laugh.

Frustrating that this information isn't really available--I wonder if it'd be a business opportunity for someone.
Ask HN: As a Big Data engineer, how do I avoid helping governments spy on us?
My career is based on data science, specifically building tools to gather, store, and make sense of large amounts of data. With the recent leaks regarding the NSA over the past couple days, I'm having a bit of an existential crisis so to speak. In fact I can actually envision how systems like PRISM could work and how to build them.

I love my work. It's fascinating and I believe that such powerful systems can do a lot of good. I'm specifically trying to get into bio- and cheminformatics to try and develop technologies that save lives and improve quality of life, but there is a lot of overlap between the technology I develop for that purpose and what Silicon Valley uses to collect innocent citizen data and pass it off to the NSA.

My question is, how do I go about ensuring that my work is only used for the benefit of mankind? Is that possible within my career? Dystopian literature has always fascinated me in a sort of macabre sense, but I absolutely loath the idea of contributing to the technology that oppressive governments would use to spy on their citizens.

Can HN give me some advice?
I wish more people used Bitmessage. It makes communications encrypted, secret (with deniability) and it also has built-in spam minimization in the protocol itself. It also includes broadcast messages (like Twitter) and chan boards. It makes email look like an old technology.

https://bitmessage.org
Actually, I think that sounds just like some nice interface.

They have to five access because the law demands it, but they also make it easy to use for the agency to use. Which for example Twitter does not do.

If the other theory about ISP level data collection would be true, it would make no sense that Twitter and Dropbox are missing and not part of PRISM.
ace-jump-mode.el for OSX. Nice.
I'm interested if @antirez has thought of extending the (admittedly fun) redis api to a disk-backed version for when you don't need the performance of in-memory, but appreciate the simplicity of the redis api.

Maybe be able to assign a specific DB number to disk?

I realize that might be kitchen sinking Redis more than he intends, but it might be worth it.
Wow, such an impactful NGO deserves a lot more. Just joined as a "gold" member for a mere $100. For full disclosure, I will receive some schwag in return.
The Program - William Binney Video Interview (NSA Whistleblower)
Because.. yours isn't, maybe. ha ha ha.
But this would cost way more than the yearly costs of $20 million in the leaked documents.
The ArDb project might fill this gap "A redis-protocol compatible persistent storage server, support LevelDB/KyotoCabinet/LMDB as storage engine." https://github.com/yinqiwen/ardb
There is no way 3 cups of coffee increases life. I don't buy this.
ArDb - A redis-protocol compatible persistent storage server (LevelDB)
Useful post that taught me a few new tricks about stash.

I like to use stashes as opposed to a "half commit" mentioned by others because conceptually it's not a commit; it represents a chunk of work that is not in a commit-ready state, but is a work in progress. You can (and almost always should, IMHO) include a description of a stash and you also know what commit the stash is based off on and the branch you had checked out when you stashed. Thus, you get the same basic information as a "half commit" while avoiding what for me is a mixing of conceptually different things that I prefer to keep separate.

Of course, to each their own. That's one of the things I love about git is that it offers at least some flexibility to taylor it to what you feel is your optimal workflow.
OK, I've gone and read the OP's text rather than just the quoted part. It seems he's talking about combining multiple X screens into one logical coordinate space, like I expect one or more of the existing extensions do, e.g. Xinerama.
Isn't it already being done? Don't gambling sites have to block US users?
I am an American. But I don't think that the world of business will always revolve around that fact. US domination of the internet is subject to disruption, and laws which require the implementation of state sponsored spyware may place US based companies at a disadvantage in the global marketplace.

To put it another way, given a choice Gmail-private will come to be preferred to Gmail-PRISM should the user facing feature sets be comparable. And it is likely to be easier to implement Gmail-private if the company providing it is located outside the US - i.e. is not Google. The same applies to search, maps, and eventually mobile communication.
For one thing, "An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica" is on his Clojure bookshelf: http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Bookshelf/lm/R3LG3ZBZS4GCTH

A quick Googling will show you that Rich has popped his head into a bunch of conversations where both Clojure and Mathematica are mentioned. He's also mentioned it in a talk or two.
You mean the Management Engine (mandantory to supply with Intel-proprietary firmware since 5 series)? Since it's the key components of Intel AMT, its features are - at a minimum:

- can run while the CPU is off

- isn't controlled by the CPU (except some protocol which is voluntary on the ME side)

- has access to the onboard GPU's framebuffer

- has access to onboard USB and on-chipset NIC

- can access RAM, bypassing the OS (_maybe_ host-controlled, since the only known use is IDE-R)

Scary enough?

On AMD the situation looks safer for now: while they have _two_ embedded controllers with firmware, from what we (coreboot developers) could gather, their reach into the system is much more limited: they could probably DoS the system by killing access to RAM and/or turn off the fans
Go on Larry, run it into the ground!

You may not care about this, owning your own personal Hawaiian island, but there's a reason people give a shit about Bill Gates and even that notorious asshole Steve Jobs, but you, you're just an object of derision!
It sounds like an exciting new system, and I hope it gains greater popularity, however there are a few reasons some may be hesitant right now:

- "Bitmessage should run on any OS though it is only lightly tested on OSX."

- "Bitmessage is in need of an independent audit to verify its security."
The app is in Beta. I imagine he could sell it for a reasonable amount.
So if the theory holds true that things need to get worse before they get better, this could be good news in that it could be the motivating event in the global market for truly private cloud services.

Perhaps some European startup has a solution to our US based privacy problem that we could all migrate to for our cloud services.
"SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. "

Twitter is heroic. Shame on Google, Facebook and all the other state-stooges
I haven never tried to write a script or algorithm or anything in Mathematica. It's not useful for that (at least to me). I use it more to explore and to understand problems.

That's why I mentioned truth tables. Being able to quickly perform symbolic simplifications is awesome. If nothing else, learn how to do that!
The 4 parts:

- The JavaScript family tree: http://creativejs.com/2013/06/the-race-for-speed-part-1-the-...;

- How compilers work: http://creativejs.com/2013/06/the-race-for-speed-part-2-how-...;

- JavaScript compiler strategies: http://creativejs.com/2013/06/the-race-for-speed-part-3-java...;

- The future for JavaScript: http://creativejs.com/2013/06/the-race-for-speed-part-4-the-...;
If you stored data in the USA, you were already subject to all these things - search warrants from the FBI, FISA requests for a user's data, etc. The law has not changed.

If your servers are in Germany, then they are the subject of German law - and all of their similar, respective search and data laws.

If you weren't aware of this before, you either weren't large enough for anyone to ask for your data, you were lucky enough to never have to deal with this request (or your software isn't really used for communication or data storage), or you were simply ignorant of the legal situation
With WebRTC this might actually work. But there's still an issue with trusting code that is redownloaded from the net all the time. (The WebApp things from Chrome and Firefox might come to help here, once they support both signed code and version pinning)
many years ago both me and my partner decided we should donate 1% of our earnings to some good cause (there seems to be a common 'meme' of giving one percent of earnings - googling turns up a lot of different ideas).

it was a good idea, and we did it once, i think, before forgetting. then a few years passed, we remembered, and did it once again. and then a few more years passed and we felt bad and got our acts together...

so now paulina regularly gives to some foundation here in chile that looks after old people, and i give to the EFF (it took me some time to decide, and i am not convinced it's the most deserving thing out there, but it does reflect me and my priorities, and in the end i decided that was what was important - other people might care more about children, or puppies, but what i want is to get the underlying freedoms straight).

anyway, i'm not boasting. i just suspect other people have thought the same, and, like us, simply not got round to it for a long time. so i thought i'd try give such people a little nudge ;o)

(also, they have cool pin badges and a really ugly t-shirt)
All of this boils down to implementation. A properly implemented QKD system is equivalent to a guarantee that the two key holders are the only one that have the key provided no interception was detected during distribution. However, in practice if there is a flaw in your implementation just like in normal cryptography it is possible to gain enough info to decrypt the transmitted information. I was just at Dr. Makarovs lab in waterloo, one of the first quantum cryptography hackers. They were exploiting such flaws as poor random number generators and optical components inherent reflection to gain information during key distribution on flawed systems. however these flaws are still not exploitable as commercial systems XOR the generated key with a traditional public key so in order to decrypt the information both the QKD and public key distribution must be cracked, which won't happen until we have a quantum computer.
The individual in me says "Wow, that's a lot of spying". Yet, the larger, money-hungry side of me says "what service/product could I develop to get a chunk of that $80 billion".
China Builds World's Fastest Supercomputer - The Hacker News
How did Reverend Bayes reason with the universe?
Online Privacy RIP 1995-2013?
It has not always been the case. Until 1947 the USA had a Department of War.

However since then we've been marching towards euphemism.
You might be interested in TACK: http://tack.io
1000+ Free College Courses Online (Video Tutorials)
Even in the absence of this specific Takeout tool, Google would need a way to comply with legal requests for a user's data across all of their various systems.

What is more likely than not is that the majority of employees at Google have no idea how the surveillance system that Google would need to have worked and were ignorant that it existed.
Coward. Not a nice word at all. I have been called this many time but I still don't know why?
Afaik a lot of Tor endpoints are actually run by the NSA / secret services. "If people try to use encrypted services they must seek to hide something"
How about we double this?

We have kickstarter campaigns that bring in more than this. I regularly contribute to the EFF and my employer matches that donation (yay Red Hat) so I'm going to double my normal donation this year.
Europe yes, UK no. Our government will happily funnel over anything the US asks for, including actual people(1).

I'd go French. Because as Eddie Izzard put it (roughly), "the French are so.... French "

(1)Yes, I am aware of the one single exception. Who I'm not so sure the US Government wanted to really that bothered with. Bad PR and all that.
IIRC, antirez experimented with that for a version or two before deciding it wasn't right for redis, deprecating then removing those added features.
> And what the NSA has isn't necessarily "direct access" to the servers - PRISM gives the analyst "direct access" to the data that has already been collected by many different means.

Right, the data may be provided directly from the servers rea time to the collection that the analyst uses, but the NSA wouldn't directly access the provider's servers. In fact, that would be counterproductive, as then users with privileged access to the provider's servers (provider side admins) could monitor what the NSA was doing with the data.
iOS versions of RedPhone and TextSecure are currently in development.
This program has been going on since 2007 and across two different Presidential administrations.
Correlation, causality and such…one of the comments on the article claims that, since coffee usually tastes bitter, those who drink coffee might also like other bitter foods, most specifically vegetables.

And given the choice between three cups of coffee and half a litre of coke, I’d still say that coffee is healthier.
I like your – very American! – optimism.

An unpleasant fact is that the Internet outside the US is under heavy surveillance too, think of China and the Arabic world but also Europe. From a user perspective, you cannot opt against surveillance, you can mainly choose who can directly intercept your communications. And in this regard and although I don't like to be under any surveillance, the US is usually the lesser evil.
I use Fastmail, owned by Opera Software- out of Australia.

Been with them for a decade, always been extra happy with it.
The corporate elite does not rule the US. We are governed by a hodgepodge of competing interests, including at least corporations, bureaucracies, states, politicians, special interests and yes the people through democratic instruments.

I'm fairly sure lp and pg have strong consciences, at least much stronger consciences that arrington, of all people.
Graphics - working in Liunx the best way to get "what you print is what you see" is to create a PDF and then print it with scaling off. Programs such as LibreOffice and Inkscape printer drivers have not been all that reliable to print properly, but export to PDF and print overcomes that.

Web Reporting - for web apps creating address label sheets with formatting that "just works" also is best route via PDF. Secondly is using tools such as PHP's FPDF/FPDI you can use PHP to programmatically fill out PDF forms, used that a lot for report forms like the DE542.

The main benefit of PDFs is that the PDF document accurately represents what you create across platforms (by including fonts, etc.) So it is very important for presentation documents, reports, and press-ready publication.
I am conditioned to wakeup with coffee. I guess I would have to drink one more cup per day to increase my life.who knows how long someone lives, certainly not the coffee makers.
check AES.io
I don't think this is a conflict. Once the legal order is made and delivered to the company, the NSA receives a real-time feed of that user's data going forward (and all past data) and uses Prism to pull all the disparate data sources together for the analyst to analyze.

Surveillance isn't just about receiving your past activity and data that already exists - they want to watch suspects use these systems to communicate in realtime to find out who else they are talking to.
As much as the US should be blamed for Prism etc., it should not be ignored that very similar programs exist in Europa as well – often in direct cooperation with the US. There might be a privacy advantage in Europe on paper but not much of that remains in daily life and business reality, it is mostly 'cover your ass' in the end.
The Future of Our Apps
primarily, if you come back to a stash a week later, other than your memory, what tells you what branch that stashed code belongs to?

If somebody else needs to take over the project and pulls the branch, what tells him there's also stashed code for it?

stashes should be very short-lived, they're the wrong tool for anything else
Australia should not be considered a 'safe location'. Australia closely cooperates with the US and is even one of the core members of Echolon. And the FastMail server are located in the US anyway …
If you live outside of the States, aren't you already boycotting US clouds because of the latency? I think I only use Tarsnap for any remotely sensitive data.

Otherwise, I keep it as close to home as possible. It's a pain to use a VPS in America for example. Even with Mosh.