The technology behind NSA spying

i'm continuing to poke around kevin's cryptogon site, again thanks to mettle's pointing me in that direction, and i am increasingly impressed with the amount and quality of information he has available there... well, "impressed" isn't really the right word... "horrified" might be more apt...

here he's talking about the information the att whistleblower, mark klein, revealed about what he helped att install in one of their main network switching centers in san francisco...

This is arcane information. It will not be easy for laypeople to understand. But… For those of you who want names, model numbers, techniques, and locations all related to how, IN FACT, They are watching EVERYTHING we are doing online, this is it.

The only reason this is public is because Mark Klein, an ATT engineer who participated in building the secret NSA infrastructure, outed it. There can be no idiotic commentary about “conspiracy theories” or “paranoia” with this. These are court documents containing information provided under penalty of perjury by an eye witness and participant in the operation. The expert analysis provided by J. Scott Marcus–which was just unsealed today—is, quite literally, shocking. For those of us who just knew this was happening, but couldn’t put our fingers on how, well, now we know.

I’ve followed publicly available information on NSA for about fifteen years and I’ve never seen anything like this. The capabilities of this system are awesome and terrifying.

When you read J. Scott Marcus’ analysis, it will become very clear to you why NSA and ATT wanted that thing sealed. Oh my, that is a good one.

So, how does NSA do it?

A company called Narus has developed the NarusInsight Intercept Suite: a purpose built network surveillance system that is capable of analyzing (in real time) ALL of the data passing through the largest network nodes in existence. This system is capable of applying sophisticated targeting rules to the traffic, as well as recording entire, individual sessions for later analysis. According to the Narus website:

These capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules. When Narus partners’ powerful analytic tools are combined with the surgical targeting and real-time collection capabilities of Directed Analysis and Lawful Intercept modules, analysts or law enforcement agents are provided capabilities that have been unavailable thus far.

here's a screenshot from narus' website...



kevin is absolutely right... there's no tin-foil hat wearing here... this is real shit and validates what i've been saying for years...

i've assumed for years that every electronic transaction i conduct on any network not directly controlled by me is subject to sniffing (and further analysis if it contains significant words, phrases, or code strings)... recently, i've come to suspect that part of the purpose for getting us to do everything electronically is precisely so that it CAN be sniffed... there's damn little now that can't be obtained or tracked...

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