[discuss] Artificial conflation of issues not helpful. [Was: Digest, Vol 3, Issue 67]

Thu Feb 20 03:21:06 UTC 2014

On 20/02/2014 15:19, Barry Shein wrote:
> It seems to me that NSA surveillance was an act of opportunity.
> 
> Tier 1, the huge pipes much of the internet passes through both w/in
> the US and internationally, are largely run by US companies such as
> Verizon and AT&T.

But of course the NSA, with their friends in 5 Eyes, have interception
points on the other sides of both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Geography isn't an insurmountable issue for them. I don't think
that rerouting as proposed by Merkel & Hollande would be too hard
for them to deal with. The fact that the network is called "Internet"
rather than, say, "X.25" is certainly not a fundamental issue for them.
The fact that the name to address lookup system is a distributed
database with multiple international root servers is not much of an
issue for them. The fact the the root zone file is maintained in the
USA is pretty much irrelevant to them.

Being "outed" by Snowden, and the resulting legal and political
hassle, is a big issue for them. They'll be *delighted* if the
hassle gets sidetracked in a discussion of "Internet governance."

    Brian

> 
> NSA had budget to pay these companies for taps into those bit streams.
> And these companies seemed pretty cooperative.
> 
> And NSA had budget to store and analyze those bits.
> 
> Some estimates were that NSA was paying on the order of hundreds of
> millions of dollars per year for taps.
> 
> The role of the DNS root in all this would be almost inconsequential
> -- it helps identify where some of those bits are going but that's all
> publicly accessible information, whois etc.
> 
> This is eavesdropping, plain and simple, albeit highly organized.
> 
> I also doubt it's peculiar to the US, other than perhaps the scope due
> to the above-mentioned opportunity and money to invest in the project.
> 
> What was peculiar to the US was Edward Snowden spilling those
> particular beans.
> 
> And, of course, a press able to chat that up, Glenn Greenwald and all
> that.
> 
> 
> 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
> 
> 2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attverizonsprint-are-paid-cash-by-nsa-for-your-private-communications/
> 
> or
> 
>    http://tinyurl.com/q74oa7u
> 
> 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Global_surveillance_disclosure
> 
> or
> 
>    http://tinyurl.com/pqh8nds
> 