NSA: Google engineers rail against latest NSA tapping revelations.

[Anchor]

(Personally I think that they were a bit too trusting of their telecom providers - still I hope this is lesson learned for everyone that sends data on private links - ENCRYPT THEM ALL and use secure key management practices - Anchor.. )

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/363318,google-blocks-nsa-by-encrypting-data-on-fibre-links.aspx

Google blocks NSA by encrypting data on fibre links

Google is encrypting traffic that traverses data centre interconnection links after learning that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been tapping the cables to siphon internal data.

Security engineer Mike Hearn took to Google+ in a personal capacity to reveal the change and to vent about the latest insight into the NSA's overreach, which is contained in a slide deck leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The slides, published by the Washington Post, show the NSA had been "copying entire data flows across leased fibre optic cables that carry information among the data centres" of Google and Yahoo!.

Samples of log files in the slides reveal details of Google's internal traffic flows, and outraged Hearn and others within Google to act.

"The traffic shown in the slides below is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ [UK Government Communications Headquarters] staff did on understanding it, ruined," Hearn said.

According to Hearn, one of the slides "shows a database recording a user login" as part of an anti-hacking system he worked on for over two years.

"We designed this system to keep criminals out," he said. "There's no ambiguity here."

Hearn said his post amounted to 'a giant F*** You' to the NSA and its UK counterpart for intercepting the web service provider's data.

Google engineer Brandon Downey has also previously railed against the NSA over the interception revelations, saying he had spent the past decade trying to keep customers safe from a great many network-borne threats.

The engineers were joined in their condemnation of the NSA by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt who called the data interception "outrageous" in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Schmidt said Google had complained about the interception to the NSA, US president Barack Obama and individual members of the US Congress lower house.

[spiritguide]

The telcoms either need to come clean or loose business. The people will work around NSA and invalidate it's existance through counter measures.

[bbj3n546pt]

I was personally heartened when I read this post - so much so that I forwarded the information to my personal computer adviser. I am providing his detailed, informative response below in the hope that others members of this forum may find it useful.

"One of the legal points the govt had argued was that in intercepting data and
penetrating computers outside the US borders was legal because it was outside of
our borders. They are not legally allowed to intercept American's
communications unless they have probable cause and a warrant, *IF* they follow
the law.

The way Google is configured, they have data centers across the world to improve
local access times as well as have redundancy and fail-over for whatever reason
such as power outage, earthquake, fire, whatever. That word, redundancy should
clue you in to their inherent design.

Having a data center close by to your geographic location certainly improves
access times but your data is replicated and spread across all their data
centers.

So, the govt's argument that they were only accessing foreign intel is bull****,
when Joe American accesses his Google email account from Kansas, the data may be
stored in Chile and in Finland or in Oregon, or scattered in part across many
data centers located across the world.

http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/

With their own private high speed fiber links, physical distance does not
matter. When fiber optic cables are laid, there is more than just one fiber
strand in the cable, there may be hundreds of them. Not all the strands are
used when the cable is installed and those are called dark fiber because they
are not "lit up" and in use. They are there for redundancy and / or future
expansion. Some of them may have been laid decades ago and never used.

Google quietly started buying up all the dark fiber they could get their hands
on anywhere it was for sale and they started building out their own global
network across the world as well as in any country they could acquire it.

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
http://www.cablemap.info/

If you notice, almost all the cables terminate in the US. Funny that. How nice
for the NSA.

The cost of transferring data across the globe does not come from the cost of
the cable but when you have to use somebody elses cable to move your data, much
in the way a toll road works.

So, there are these quid pro quo agreements called peering agreements between
cable owners, you carry my data traffic, I'll carry yours. It'll all balance
out in the end. Suddenly, Google lit up all this previously dark fiber across
the globe and they became a big fish in a big pond overnight.

That's what made Youtube, Netflix and Skype possible AND having their own data
centers in far flung regions of the globe. THAT is why your Google email can be
stored in Finland and when you access it from your desktop in Tucson, it's near
instantaneous.

Google will not state exactly how many servers they operate but according to
their observed and calculated power usage, square footage, cooling capacity and
water consumption stats, there is a general formula used to determine how much
computing power you can squeeze into a square or cubic foot of data center real
estate and the formula uses those four data points. The general consensus is
that they currently operate over 500,000 servers in their data centers and that
estimate is several years old. They are adding more servers all the time as
well as building new data centers.

Google has publically stated in the past that a person's data is replicated
across three separate data centers at a minimum for speed and redundancy.

So, when the NSA states that they were only accessing servers outside the US,
which is legal for them to do, they were also accessing US citizen's data on a
wholesale basis too because Joe American's email may be stored in Hong Kong.
The Internet does not observe physical border boundaries in the traditional
sense of what one would consider.

The way Google works is their system appears as one huge single computer with a
single filing system, where something is stored does not physically matter for
the most part, it's retrieved and updated as needed. When you walk up to a
Dutch door at a huge warehouse and ask the guy behind the door for Fram oil
filter, part number 12345, you don't care about which shelf or row it's stored
on, as long as the guy comes back with the correct one you want in his hand is
all that matters.

That's the way Google is laid out. So when the NSA tapped Google's fiber lines,
they had access to everything traveling across Google's system. I have no doubt
that they have compromised the integrity of many servers inside Google's data
centers, so even if the external communication lines are encrypted, they can
probably still have access to computers on the inside and if they can access
computers on the inside, they still have access to everything. The external
encryption does not matter.

General Michael Hayden, a former head of the NSA once stated on a 60 minutes
interview years ago that they depend on people assuming that this or that task
can't possibly be done and they do it on a daily basis."

[bbj3n546pt]

The assault by the NSA/DOJ continues ....

Link to complete article: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/department-justice-privacy-internet-lavabit-encryption-keys

Synopsis.

Internet privacy relies heavily on the ability of tech companies to hide user content—such as your emails and bank information—behind a secure wall. But the Department of Justice is waging an unprecedented battle in court to win the power to seize the keys of US companies whenever the US government wants.

The government obtained a warrant demanding that Lavabit give up the [encryption] keys anyway. When the company refused (at one point, Levison [Lavabit founder] turned over the keys in 11 pages of 4-point type that no one could read) it was held in contempt of court and slapped with a $5,000-a-day fine. Lavabit handed over the keys right before shutting down the entire company.

Lavabit is working on a project called the Dark Mail Alliance with another secure provider, Silent Circle, which followed Lavabit's lead and shuttered its email service in August in an effort to resist the NSA.

[Aurelius]

sounds fishy ..

A friend told me (and she would know), in the UK the government forces you to comply (ie. provide network access so they can snoop) or they threaten to revoke your ISP license. Why should it be any different in the US with NDAA already in place?

What I am trying to convey is there are people at Google fully in the know of what's going on and there's nothing they can do about it. If they talk they will harm their business, and they also have gag orders in place. Point in case being Snowden's encrypted email provider (who did the honorable thing and shut itself down instead of play ball)

If I didn't know any better I would say this is PR cooked up at Google to help "ease" the situation...

Personally I wouldn't believe a word of it!

[Cidersomerset]

A couple of items I put on the Snowden thread that applies here for ref....

CIA pays AT&T for data

_q05DOWZCyQ

Published on 7 Nov 2013


The CIA is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with
its overseas counterterrorism investigations by handing over call
data without a subpoena or court order, according to a new article
by the New York Times. Also this week, the Silk Road, the online,
underground market that the FBI raided and shut down four weeks
ago, is back up and running. Silk Road is notorious for selling illegal
goods like drugs and guns by using the online currency BitCoin, but
a new posting says that Silk Road is also used to raise money for
charities. RT's Meghan Lopez talks to Ladar Levison, founder of
former email encryption service Lavabit, about these topics, his
new encryption service called Dark Mail Alliance and more in this
week's Tech Report

[Cidersomerset]

The inventor of the web not impressed.........


http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.54.3/desktop/3.5/img/blq-blocks_grey_alpha.png


7 November 2013 Last updated at 14:56

Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee criticises spy agencies....

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70960000/jpg/_70960664_70960659.jpg


Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim Berners-Lee said important issues had
been raised by recent leaks


The British computer scientist who created the world wide web has
said encryption cracking by UK and US spy agencies is "appalling and foolish".

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the Guardian that the practice undermined efforts
to fight cybercrime and cyberwarfare.

He called for a "full and frank public debate" on internet surveillance.

It comes as a parliamentary committee has quizzed the heads of the
UK's spying agencies - GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 - together in public for the first time.

Read More....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24844427

[Conchis]

Some might be interested in an app called safeslinger. It is like PGP in that it uses encrypted keys, however, it is different in that you have to be physically with the other party in order for the keys to be created. There is no public record of the encryption keys. It's all a face to face transfer initially. After that, "secure" emails can be sent between the parties.