skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Just to let you know I am planning on doing a series at my blog on thoughts regarding key management of a secure telephony system. My overall thoughts are to have a very tightly controlled key change policy so that a wiretap is only possible where either a customer's certificate authority's key has been compromised (custoemrs would be expected to run their own CA's) or where new calls were being established between parties that had not called eachother before. An interesting property of the system I am thinking about is that when a wiretap would end the next call to a previously evesdropped target would generate a warning.
I especially liked the fake incredulity: why would some of the richest people on earth not want to be turned into the next Bradley Manning? Well gee, I simply can't imagine their motivations!
Yes because I really did hold my grandmother at gunpoint as she gave me the 14th update in the last hour about her stupid cat.
School Shooting at Santa Monica College
to be frank, that changes my opinion of the significance of his posting quite a bit.

it'd be nice if someone would correct the title of this.
I'd argue yes, because with unlimited government you can continuously apply more government to solve problems, but because the only people who could rescind government are those elected into the positions of ruling government, and more government gives you more control, influence, and power, it is directly antithesis the best interests of those in power to actively reduce the influence of the government they rule.
It's possible PRISM is a separate program that's accounted for differently. We've had pretty good evidence for a while now that the government does have firehose type capability in at least some locations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
In the U.S., if you're mailing a large number of items, you can get significant discounts for providing the mail to the post office pre-sorted by the 9-digit ZIP code. To take advantage of that, your address schema would at least need to be able to extract that information.

One compromise would be to impose an address schema by default, but allow users whose addresses are incompatible with it to opt out of it and enter a free-form address.
> Utterly amazing how modern human logic works.

It isn't logical, its emotional. There is no logic in imperialism given historical evidence against it.
Study: 28% Increase In Thyroid Problems In Babies Born After Fukushima in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-04-03/study-almost...
Yup, because instead of expecting politicians who made the laws and judges who approved the FISA orders, let's call out the CEOs.

I don't even understand the outrage that most US citizens are showing at the moment for the said firms even after realizing that any access that may have been provided was through the channels that the governments had 'legally' set up. And that at least some of the companies had resisted. It seems very unfair to me, largely as an outsider and yet a stakeholder, that the only people who are being held accountable in the piece are the CEOs who had little to do with the fiasco.
Also, check this out: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/dont-waste-yo...;
Every US war has been accompanied by the suppression of civil liberties. Eventually, the mistakes tend to be rolled back. At the outset of the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. During WWI, Wilson outlawed dissent against the war. During WWII, Roosevelt threw Japanese Americans into camps in the desert.
What if they released remarkably similar statements that very specifically denied the specific things they're not supposed to be admitting to doing...

Or perhaps that's the charitable interpretation.
It's also embedded in F5 (as iRules) and A10 network gear.

See https://devcentral.f5.com/tech-tips/articles/irules-concepts...
It should be noted that the state secrets privilege was created in the cold war period in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds.

Following the declassification of the data many years later, critics have concluded that the government asserted it fraudulently. Certainly it seems likely that it has been asserted fraudulently since. And its use has increased over time.
This is one of the best articles I've seen linked here in a long time. oP covers so much stuff but simplifies exactly where needed so everything stays understandable and there are no gaps (the "how to paint an owl" syndrome).

Thank you so much for writing and posting this. You made my day.
> Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct
> access” or “back doors” when companies are building
> “secure portals” for them instead?

The primary argument against government agencies having direct access to private data is that it removes the data's caretaker from the decision-making process.

That is different from having an access portal for agencies to submit warrants or other legal requests. There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.

This article would have been much better if it had focused on the ethically dubious nature of FISA, and how problematic it is to interpret the fourth amendment as applying only to American citizens.

But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks.
All it takes is one. One person with strong sense of the natural order of life and the courage to stand up. It may be scary as hell... I can appreciate that. However, everyone is born with the ability to reason. From reason we can innately sense what is right and wrong (not based on emotions). Do what is right, after all... if doing the right thing was easy, EVERYONE would do it.
Can't one produce effectively the same setup as X11 with a compositor that has a plugin system dedicated to surface positioning?
It is the power equation which has changed.

Modeling each individual in a population the size of America based on a 1000 variables would be the realm of fantasy in the 1990s. The manpower requirements to even gather, organize and group large volumes of data made profiling, or things like Obama's campaign the things of science fiction.

Now the system has shifted dramatically. Not only is such analysis is possible, it is constant. While the models are not perfect, they managed to get Obama to 1.5 % of the final poll numbers.

Practically - this is a difference between bronze age weaponry and Iron age weaponry, and only one side has the ability to use these weapons. Normal citizens will not be able to run similar models on government.

Normal citizens dont have access to databases of such data, nor can they in turn stay one step ahead of the government.

Earlier the barrier for a government to collude against its populace meant that a strong civil rights movement could halt nascent programs because of the runway required for them to take off (Years and large manpower requirements just to record data).

Ideally at this stage, people need to know what is being predicted about them, how the data is being used. People need to be mutually armed and aware.
Heh, it is a bit. The reason is probably the uncanny valley effect[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
The system the NYTimes article outlines is still quite different from what the original leak suggested. According to the Times article, the requested data isn't placed into the locked mailbox until the FISA request is reviewed by somebody at the company. This is nowhere near the same level of access as what the PRISM leak suggested. So if what the Times article says is true, Zuckerberg and Page's statements weren't misleading at all. They really do "review each and every request."

The fact that they've built special systems for giving the government the data is not too surprising or scandalous. If I ran a site getting the same number of FISA requests that Google and Facebook presumably get, I'd probably also design a special system to make the process more convenient and secure. Short of openly challenging the NSA in court, this is probably the best response we could hope for. It gives the company control over what data is released and is much more secure than a back door which could be compromised.
Amen. Perhaps it's because we expect so little of our government that we lash out at Zuck, LP etc as they at least answer to the free market, and therefore can effect change.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project
There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.

Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only entity who can challenge this kind of behavior in courts.

But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks.

Nice ad hom, but it's mistaken. Arrington is many things, but he actually feels the way he writes.
McCarthy isn't vilified because he was wrong; he's vilified because his efforts to prove himself right nearly turned America into the thing he most despised. Part of living in a liberal democratic state that trusts its citizens is understanding and accepting that some of those citizens will abuse that trust, and then dealing with those individuals on a case-by-case basis rather than assuming that everyone will abuse it.

It's very much like the folks who insist they should never get into a relationship because they might get hurt, or never found a startup because it might fail. That's the point. We choose to live with that vulnerability because it makes the moments where it doesn't fail so much sweeter.
With all of the conspiracy theories floating around, what about something fun, like the government proved P=NP and is just able to secretly crack the encryption keys, passwords, etc., like that silly movie "The Traveling Salesman Problem" where they turn algorithms into an action packed movie.

Seriously though, it seems like the general consensus is that no one on either side is actually lying, but the companies involved are using weasely language that can be interpreted to exclude any kind of indirect access, SSL keys, etc? I'm surprised at the tone of the statements the companies are giving, because were it to come out that the companies are giving indirect access, their adamance would just make them look terrible...It's as if the companies in their statements, at least FB and Google, sound shocked, hurt, etc. to find out people would assume that of them.
I'd think most programmers can understand their reasoning behind creating "secure portals". If you're being forced to hand data over to the government you may as well do it securely and consistently.

Rather than some ad hoc process of burned CDs or USB drives, just create some simple software that makes the process secure, reliable, and traceable.

The alternative is USB drives and Fedex envelopes, which is harder to track and probably less secure.
I was clearly wrong.

But I am still lost on how it would be detectable? From Google's end, some client just disconnected. From the client's end, the internet just got a tiny bit more latency.
As someone who tries to avoid mice for RSI-related reasons, this looks amazing. Thank you.
Could someone explain to me why the "mailbox" is so scandalous? The government makes a legal, valid request for data on a specific individual. Now the tech company has to relay that information to the government somehow. How would you prefer they do that? Email? FTP? Postcard?

No, they use a secure electronic dead drop. So what? How does that make the various CEOs' statements in any way misleading? The statements were about the government not having the ability to go on unsupervised fishing expeditions. And that seems to be perfectly true and not in any way misleading.
1,700 pages of leaked documentation on NSA "Sweet Tea" datacenter in Georgia
This is accurate. When your service provider is having a scheduled maintenance, it might be a passive optical tap or port replicator.
Please stop upvoting Business Insider until they improve they journalistic standards. We harm ourselves by encouraging and funding these people.
See how much Google (and now the government) know about where you've been
"prior probability" is a fancy way of saying "without evidence, I believe what I want". Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not something Larry Page can help you with.
But what if the FISA request is 'everything'. Yes they're complying, someone gives it a look over then adds everything and keeps it updated in real time.

They don't have direct access to the servers, they're complying with the law, they have everyone's data.

The worst bit is that this is all kept secret. If it's all so acceptable then why didn't the public at least get told.
I don't know if Arrington is saying they shouldn't have built the portals... I think he just wants them to openly admit it and be transparent about the work they're doing with the government.
To the best of my knowledge, he's never been definitively identified, nor his fate established:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
They've clearly stated that they're complying with laws that require them to hand over specific user data. These companies are using secure portals as opposed to envelopes filled with CDs. So what?
Be sure to delete your data and turn off tracking
An article that waxes poetic, yet is so very hollow and devoid of realism.

What would you have these companies do? Band together in a mighty ring of technological resources and begin a Privacy Revolution?

This is unrealistic. As an American, I am saddened and angered by the recent news of the past two days. I am disgusted with what our government has done - what it has hidden from us, to take advantage of us unawares.

But we need to consolidate our anger. We have to aim it precisely, and arm ourselves against the proper enemy. It will not help the tech community to bicker amongst ourselves and be disappointed with CEOs for what the NSA has done. This community has great resources. Let those resources stand. Experts from every tech center in the country, across industries spanning finance, security, engineering, and many more - we are all pooled here. We can make an impact.

But not if we are busy attacking those whose positions we cannot possibly corroborate. Their hands were tied. In an ideal world, every man and woman would be consumed with a righteous fury and ignore whips, imprisonment and even death for the greater glory of what is right.

This is not that world. This is not idealism. The government wronged us. The government made the first move. The government forced their hands, made them cooperate by ratifying unethical conduct and making it illegal (and treasonous, as a violation of national security) to resist. Who would have acted differently in their position? And what would it have achieved?

I recognize that it is discomforting that we cannot simply believe tech leaders after what today's events have shown us. I get that. But they are not the ones who violated our privacy. They were the medium. That is not fair to them. If they made a mistake, it was only in trying to navigate perilous waters somewhere between honor and law. Unfortunately, the law is not on their side.

With Mark Zuckerberg jailed or Facebook sued by an insurmountable public agency, or Google's assets seized and its constituent leaders punished, who would be benefitted? Should we ask them to suffer and violate laws just for a truth that has come out only hours later?

If you want a takeaway from this, it's simple. It's unfair to hold people to expectations of high moral standing when they have unknown pressures put upon them. And in light of that, we need to remember who the true wrongdoers here are. If Larry and Zuckerberg have made mistakes, so be it. But know that they paled in comparison to the NSA, and that is our prime prerogative.
The page the original link pointed to was just redirected to the "closed cities". Original page this post linked to: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atomgrad&oldid=545...
“The government does not have access to Google servers”
Nice. Quote the NY Times article describing how things work, and fail to quote the bit where the employees tasked with responding to FISA orders, and who were possibly involved in the program, were legally not allowed to inform the CEO of what they were doing.

CEOs who are not informed can release statements indicating the depth of their ignorance without being deliberately dishonest.

That said, the alleged situation frankly astounds me. The government SHOULD NOT have employees at companies devoting company resources to projects that the people running those companies are not allowed to know about. But that is exactly what the NY Times claimed.
>> There is no obvious reason why a company should have
>> an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.
>
> Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only
> entity who can challenge this kind of behavior in courts.

The concept of search warrants is built into the constitution, and is supported by countless judicial decisions. Challenging the ability for the government to demand customer data would take much more than a few tech companies.
I, for one, would love to see the government try to Bradley Manning Mark Zuckerberg for telling the truth. It would at least be more interesting than the current Orwellian dialogue we are having with our government and corporate leaders, and it would probably be more substantive too.
There are no such slides. The slide just has a name and a date, no details of what "participation" means.
If you use (or have used) Google Now, this is eye opening.
>According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US.

This sounds alarming.
"While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not."

This is the crux of the matter, but this statement is not strictly true. If a company only sent information on 1.44MB floppy disks, or started requiring NSA agents to run an obstacle course or something, they would be held in contempt of court. These requests have an implicit requirement of ease of access, and what that means is ultimately up to a judge's discretion.
DOJ Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance
Arrington was addressing the leaders of these companies, not the organizations themselves. While corporations obviously do not have consciences nor moral compasses, his point was that humans do, or at least they should. And I think he was pretty clear about what he would have those leaders do:

> Perhaps you could all get on a conference call tonight and double dare each other to do it all together, at the same time.

> “The NSA makes us do things that crush our Constitution, and then they make us never talk about it.”

> I hope one of them does

They don't need to lead any revolutions, or even leak classified information. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. All he's asking for is for them to not lie to us, especially when they know that we know that what they're saying is demonstrably false.
Of course it would be illegal. Same as if they said "eway eceivedray one-a ationalnay ecuritysay etterlay." Any way they intentionally communicate information is a disclosure. English language isn't treated specially.
I merged the two pages, mainly because of znowi's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843809

The "Closed City" article has significantly more information that the Atomgrad article did, and is a more useful resource.
What you're talking about is referred to as a warrant canary. There's a nice Wikipedia entry on the subject, if you're interested. [1]

Check out [2] for an example of one.

Perhaps we should be pressuring companies like Dropbox (whom was implicated as "coming soon" in the documents leaked) to implement such a system.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

[2] http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

Edit: Now thinking about it, Dropbox was probably already hit with a request. Maybe we should focus on other services that may be of future interest to the government?
Encryption doesn't mean:

- that it's implementation secure (for example Android FDE is trivial to crack for us, imagine what a joke it is for the NSA)

- that it's algorithms are secure (gone are the days where the NSA would warn us DES is broken to help US companies)

- that the data is never stored or sent in clear - the system has full access to the data, in clear, when its running.

- that there is no backdoor. each step of the implementation can have relatively hard to spot backdoors. Specially in proprietary code.
No evidence of NSA's 'direct access' to tech companies
Just because the laws, judges and politicians are not behaving well, doesn't make CEOs' behavior admirable.

The allegation is that they are deliberately misleading. I don't know if it is true but that is what they are attacked for.

Heck maybe people perceive that a single CEO like Page or Zuckerberg do have more power to change things than those in Congress or Obama. That says something as well.

It is also a battle of expectations. Maybe many expect NSA, Obama and other secret government agencies to fuck everything, but they thought, heck at least the "Do No Evil" Google will stand on our side, or my buddy Zuck will.
If you think it's only the USA, you're fooling yourself pretty hard.
OK, check out this bit:

"And so when that bell rings, they say, 'Hey, they hardly ever use this account, but it's associated with Rashid Rauf, who is al Qaeda's master bomb maker, behind the plot to blow up all the airplanes, 'Who's he talking to?' And when they find out the other IP address on the other end resolves to Aurora, Colo., outside Denver, it connects them to Zazi, it takes them to the plot to blow up the New York subways, it's all prevented. That's how a program like this is supposed to work."

That, to me, weakens the government's argument that they need to collect all this data indiscriminately using PRISM. They had an email address that was associated with a known Al-Qaeda bombmaker... ok, great, go get a warrant and get permission to pull all emails sent to or from that address. That would have caught this guy just the same! Which takes us back to what I said before, which is that analyzing activity between random people isn't going to do anything to help catch a terrorist.

Either you know somebody is "on the radar" or you don't. If two (or more) people are plotting with each other to explode something, you can analyze the metadata about their calling and emailing habits until the cows come home, and it's not going to tell you that they're planning to plant a bomb if none of them are current suspects. Now if they reach out to a known bombmaker or militant group or something, then OK, that would tell you something. But, in that case, you just go get a warrant.

The one argument I could almost see for this PRISM thing to make a little bit of sense, is this:

If there are too many "suspected terrorist" phone numbers and email addresses for the Verizon's and AT&T's and GMails of the world to monitor constantly, in real time, and sending an alert to the NSA if there is activity. So by getting a raw dump of everything, the NSA can then run their analysis using their super-duper fancy schmancy quantum computer, or whatever they have (probably just a huge Hadoop cluster, but who knows) to mine for the "hits".

But even if that were the case, I'd still consider this PRISM thing to be way over-reaching and improper.
Wait. That's it? That's all PRISM is--a special method of handing over information that is requested via court order?

Is this correct?
Was that really necessary?

This results in actual information loss, since the closed cities page does not have the same detail about this particular part. And also, now the original post makes no sense, since the word "atomgrad" is not even present on the closed cities page.