PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

Sat Jun 8 00:57:13 UTC 2013

So when are we rioting?

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Nick Khamis <symack at gmail.com> wrote:

> Tax payer money...... :)
>
> On 6/7/13, Mark Seiden <mis at seiden.com> wrote:
> > what a piece of crap this article is.
> >
> > the guy doesn't understand what sniffing can and can't do.  obviously he
> > doesn't understand peering or routing, and he doesn't understand what
> cdns
> > are for.
> >
> > he doesn't understand the EU safe harbor, saying it applies to govt
> > entitites, when it's purely about companies hosting data of EU citizens.
> >
> > he quotes a source who suggests that the intel community might have
> > privileged search access to facebook, which i don't believe.
> >
> > he even says "company-owned equipment" might refer to the NSA, which i
> > thought everybody calls the "agency" so to not confuse with the CIA.
> >
> > and he suggests that these companies might have given up their "master
> > decryption keys" (as he terms them) so that USG could decrypt SSL.
> >
> > and the $20M cost per year, which would only pay for something the size
> of a
> > portal or a web site, well, that's mysterious.
> >
> > sheesh.
> >
> > this is not journalism.
> >
> >
> > On Jun 7, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Also of interest:
> >>
> >>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/nsa-prism-records-surveillance-questions
> >>
> >> - ferg
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Michael Hallgren <m.hallgren at free.fr>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Le 07/06/2013 19:10, Warren Bailey a écrit :
> >>>> Five days ago anyone who would have talked about the government having
> >>>> this capability would have been issued another tin foil hat. We think
> we
> >>>> know the truth now, but why hasn't echelon been brought up? I'm not
> >>>> calling anyone a liar, but isn't not speaking the truth the same
> thing?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ;-)
> >>>
> >>> mh
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my Mobile Device.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> -------- Original message --------
> >>>> From: Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com>
> >>>> Date: 06/07/2013 9:34 AM (GMT-08:00)
> >>>> To:
> >>>> Cc: NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
> >>>> Subject: Re: PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Matthew Petach
> >>>> <mpetach at netflight.com>wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Has fingers directly in servers of top Internet content companies,
> >>>>>> dates to 2007.  Happily, none of the companies listed are transport
> >>>>>> networks:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Cheers,
> >>>>>> -- jra
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink
> >>>>>> jra at baylink.com
> >>>>>> Designer                     The Things I Think
> >>>>>> RFC
> >>>>>> 2100
> >>>>>> Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000
> Land
> >>>>>> Rover DII
> >>>>>> St Petersburg FL USA               #natog                      +1
> 727
> >>>>>> 647 1274
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> I've always just assumed that if it's in electronic form,
> >>>>> someone else is either reading it now, has already read
> >>>>> it, or will read it as soon as I walk away from the screen.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Much less stress in life that way.  ^_^
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Matt
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> When I posted this yesterday, I was speaking somewhat
> >>>> tongue-in-cheek, because we hadn't yet made a formal
> >>>> statement to the press.  Now that we've made our official
> >>>> reply, I can echo it, and note that whatever fluffed up
> >>>> powerpoint was passed around to the washington post,
> >>>> it does not reflect reality.  There are no optical taps in
> >>>> our datacenters funneling information out, there are no
> >>>> sooper-seekret backdoors in the software that funnel
> >>>> information to the government.  As our formal reply
> >>>> stated: "Yahoo does not provide the government with
> >>>> direct access to its servers, systems, or network."
> >>>> I believe the other major players supposedly listed
> >>>> in the document have released similar statements,
> >>>> all indicating a similar lack of super-cheap government
> >>>> listening capabilities.
> >>>>
> >>>> Speaking just for myself, and if you quote me on this
> >>>> as speaking on anyone else's behalf, you're a complete
> >>>> fool, if the government was able to build infrastructure
> >>>> that could listen to all the traffic from a major provider
> >>>> for a fraction of what it costs them to handle that traffic
> >>>> in the first place, I'd be truly amazed--and I'd probably
> >>>> wonder why the company didn't outsource their infrastruture
> >>>> to the government, if they can build and run it so much
> >>>> more cheaply than the commercial providers.  ;P
> >>>> 7 companies were listed; if we assume the
> >>>> burden was split roughly evenly between them, that's
> >>>> 20M/7, about $2.85M per company per year to tap in,
> >>>> or about $238,000/month per company listed, to
> >>>> supposedly snoop on hundreds of gigs per second
> >>>> of data.  Two ways to handle it: tap in, and funnel
> >>>> copies of all traffic back to distant monitoring posts,
> >>>> or have local servers digesting and filtering, just
> >>>> extracting the few nuggets they want, and sending
> >>>> just those back.
> >>>>
> >>>> Let's take the first case; doing optical taps, or other
> >>>> form of direct traffic mirroring, carrying it untouched
> >>>> offsite to process; that's going to mean the ability to
> >>>> siphon off hundreds of Gbps per datacenter and carry
> >>>> it offsite for $238k/month; let's figure a major player
> >>>> has data split across at least 3 datacenters, so about
> >>>> $75K/month per datacenter to carry say 300Gbps of
> >>>> traffic.  It's pretty clearly going to have to be DWDM
> >>>> on dark fiber at that traffic volume; most recent
> >>>> quotes I've seen for dark fiber put it at $325/mile
> >>>> for already-laid-in-ground (new builds are considerably
> >>>> more, of course).  If we figure the three datacenters
> >>>> are split around just the US, on average you're going
> >>>> to need to run about 1500 miles to reach their central
> >>>> listening post; that's $49K/month just to carry the
> >>>> bitstream, which leaves you just about $25K/month
> >>>> to run the servers to digest that data; at 5c/kwhr, a
> >>>> typical server pulling 300 watts is gonna cost you $11/month
> >>>> to run; let's assume each server can process 2Gbps of
> >>>> traffic, constantly; 150 servers for the stream of 300Gbps
> >>>> means we're down to $22K for the rest of our support
> >>>> costs; figure two sysadmins getting paid $10k/month
> >>>> to run the servers (120k annual salary), and you've got
> >>>> just $2k for G&A overhead.
> >>>>
> >>>> That's a heck of an efficient operation they'd have to be
> >>>> running to listen in on all the traffic for the supposed
> >>>> budget number claimed.
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm late for work; I'll follow up with a runthrough of the
> >>>> other model, doing on-site digestion and processing
> >>>> later, but I think you can see the point--it's not realistic
> >>>> to think they can handle the volumes of data being
> >>>> claimed at the price numbers listed.  If they could,
> >>>> the major providers would already be doing it for
> >>>> much cheaper than they are today.  I mean, the
> >>>> Utah datacenter they're building is costing them
> >>>> $2B to build; does anyone really think if they're
> >>>> overpaying that much for datacenter space, they
> >>>> could really snoop on provider traffic for only
> >>>> $238K/month?
> >>>>
> >>>> More later--and remember, this is purely my own
> >>>> rampant speculation, I'm not speaking for anyone,
> >>>> on behalf of anyone, or even remotely authorized
> >>>> or acknowledged by any entity on this rambling,
> >>>> so please don't go quoting this anywhere else,
> >>>> it'll make you look foolish, and probably get me
> >>>> in trouble anyhow.  :(
> >>>>
> >>>> Matt
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
> >> fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
>