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Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: deniedwings on March 18, 2012, 06:21 pm

Title: Scary government complex
Post by: deniedwings on March 18, 2012, 06:21 pm
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

Quote
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

From wired magazine, generally pretty reliable.  Scary shit if true.
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: randomovdbuser on March 18, 2012, 07:55 pm
it IS true. The only thing you can do about it is not mention "Osama", "kill the president", "fly an rc jet loaded with C4 into the pentagon" in e-mail, phone calls, or other online-shit.
Whoops. I just did. *grin*
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: boringflooring on March 19, 2012, 02:53 am
Hide the porn!
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: Dr.HellNo on March 19, 2012, 04:03 am
aren't you glad you always encrypt your emails, browse through Tor, have an apartment and utilities under a false name and only use burner cell phones? what, you don't? amateurs.
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: dr34dl0ck on March 19, 2012, 04:40 am
aren't you glad you always encrypt your emails, browse through Tor, have an apartment and utilities under a false name and only use burner cell phones? what, you don't? amateurs.

Haha that did have me laughing..

"But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: Dr.HellNo on March 19, 2012, 05:26 am
{ door and window locks, a good security system, a vault, a paper shredder, safe garbage practice, etc. } this won't stop a tank or a laser guided bomb but then if you are a target of a military that has tanks and laser guided bombs... good luck.

{ encrypted file systems, encrypted emails, proxy & Tor browsing, safe phone practice, safe money practice, etc. } this won't stop a cyber-warfare super power but then if you are a target of a national security agency... good luck.
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: Oldtoker on March 19, 2012, 07:27 am
it IS true. The only thing you can do about it is not mention "Osama", "kill the president", "fly an rc jet loaded with C4 into the pentagon" in e-mail, phone calls, or other online-shit.
Whoops. I just did. *grin*

But if everyone mentioned these in their conversations, my guess is, the would be overwhelmed.  We should start a movement where some key words are always mentioned in all electronic conversations. 
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: dr34dl0ck on March 19, 2012, 04:16 pm
{ door and window locks, a good security system, a vault, a paper shredder, safe garbage practice, etc. } this won't stop a tank or a laser guided bomb but then if you are a target of a military that has tanks and laser guided bombs... good luck.

{ encrypted file systems, encrypted emails, proxy & Tor browsing, safe phone practice, safe money practice, etc. } this won't stop a cyber-warfare super power but then if you are a target of a national security agency... good luck.

touche
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: randomovdbuser on March 19, 2012, 07:16 pm
or, we could start a weapons-subdivision of SR.
Ow no, wait.
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: benomatu3 on March 19, 2012, 11:45 pm
Wow, proof that the US is becoming a total police state that spies and distrusts their citizens.
This is why I keep tape in front of my webcam...
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: dr34dl0ck on March 20, 2012, 12:31 am
Wow, proof that the US is becoming a total police state that spies and distrusts their citizens.
This is why I keep tape in front of my webcam...

The webcam pointing towards your own face on every iphone, laptop, etc makes me nervous also..
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: themessenger2 on March 20, 2012, 12:49 am
Never done anything illegal in front of my webcam. The only thing they are going to see is me jerking off. If I'm the target of a national security agency at that time... good luck (to them)  :o


 :P
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: benomatu3 on March 20, 2012, 12:53 am
It's not even about doing illegal stuff, it's about having less government confirmation on my appearance if shit hits the fan...
I'm more paranoid then I should be though lol
It's been like that since I was a teen...
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: dr34dl0ck on March 20, 2012, 01:16 am
Exactly I just think of it as a live motion picture tracker. More confirmation. On iphones they can see who is infront and behind you when your using it. Maybe..
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: themessenger2 on March 20, 2012, 03:07 am
It was just a joke guys. They don't go over well on the net.. lol
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: jochem on March 20, 2012, 03:27 am
This is some scary shit indeed. Big Brother and stuff.

On the other hand, I really doubt how much they can crack (which strength of encryption). They need to bruteforce it, which is easy to slow down. It's a whole other story of course if they've found flaws in a hash function. But if they're not careful with how they use the unencrypted data (which was encrypted by that flawed hash function), it will probably come out which hash function is broken.
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: Oldtoker on March 20, 2012, 09:11 am
Never done anything illegal in front of my webcam. The only thing they are going to see is me jerking off. If I'm the target of a national security agency at that time... good luck (to them)  :o


 :P

I think they'd need a high magnification zoom lens to see that.  ;D
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: themessenger2 on March 20, 2012, 04:14 pm
Luckily this is a cheap $10 camera from a couple of years ago. The jittery frame rate is bound to keep me safe. :D
Title: Re: Scary government complex
Post by: dr34dl0ck on March 20, 2012, 04:35 pm
Yeah strong cryptography seems like it cant be easily broken especially with a delay on the site, like 5 guesses a min, etc.