Re: CALEA & Re: XKeyscore

[Michal Purzynski <michal () rsbac org>]

On 8/12/13 3:07 PM, Pedro Luis Karrasquillo wrote:
> That was really funny and tongue-in-cheek, michal!
> I really enjoyed your response, put a grin in my face in this grimy 
> Monday...
> you encourage me to turn off the digest delivery and receive the 
> responses as they happen instead... great list to receive real time if 
> you are into S&M and getting trolled hard by very smart people!
Happy to make you happy! :-)
> On slide 7 they show a red dot over Venezuela. You think Chavez let 
> the spooks tap into the fiber there too? Where does the fiber tap 
> connect to? Oh wait, there is a red dot over Moscow too...
The red dots are basically showing places where NSA can intercept 
communication. Any communication. Ever heard about radio links?

Oh wait, NSA was intercepting Soviet communication for ages, including 
the "private" phone from communist leaders car phone. I bet they didn't 
agree, either ;)
> tborland nailed it with the links he sent... you do not need tons of 
> copper, glass mirrors, nor Mulder & Scully on the case to do this. No 
> need to ship immediate data to Utah or any other central location 
> either. Data could be indexed locally and only the relevant keywords 
> posted to C&C. Ever heard of distributed computing? Nobody dumps CDR 
> data to tape to hand it over to mediation any more. Oh, wait... the 
> DACS is still connected to that Okidata Dot matrix printer and the ink 
> tape needs to be changed... bye.
Man, you just created a mental loop in what you said. So, two lines 
earlier you said Chavez / Putin would not allow them to intercept 
communication by means of taping cables and now you are saying that ... 
NSA was able to install a quite complicated distributed architecture in 
Moscow. I'm sure mr Putin would be happy to talk with you and it might 
be an experience you could brag about all day and night long. You should 
definitely call him.

You don't need to intercept Russian traffic in Russia. Ever heard about 
Internet Exchange Points? The traffic will, sooner or later, leave the 
country. And if it does not, and stays local, and you have no local 
means, you are out of luck. No magic there, only a network design.

Cisco architecture is there, like there are many others. And it's just 
one of the brands. You just use best means you have for the situation. 
And it's accidentally managed by SNMP... so what? It could be telnet, 
who cares.

These days you just mix and match all the technologies you have for 
intercepting. And whenever you can tap the cable, you do it, because it 
gives you the best bang for the buck.

Red dots are most likely (guessing here) - we can have data from there. 
It does not mean "everything" but something. To show off to everyone how 
great we, the NSA are. What the heck, you need slides like that for the 
budget planning.

Seriously, decide what do you want to say ;)

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