njlauren
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quote:
ORIGINAL: JeffBC
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
So to 'tap' the entire internet traffic would be very difficult, because the packets that make up the traffic go by varying routes. You could pick it up by tapping the source or by the receiving machine, but in between would be very difficult because the packets go by way of coxies barn.
Undisputed tapping of San Jose node
I'll ask tomorrow how the short-haul traffic is captured.
Even assuming the NSA could 'tap the entire internet'
Again, we need not assume that. The above diagram pretty clearly illustrates how trivially easy the intercept part would be (pending the answer I need for short-haul)
even assuming they had server farms with disks big enough to store it, they would have a devil of a time trying to process it, it would probably take them many years to process 1 days total internet traffic, and that is being generous.
I did a quick bit of googling. Throughput on sustained write is no problem. I'll need to do some math on the capacity part but let's remember that you don't need to build out your SAN entirely before you start. You just need to keep adding storage faster than about 125TB/s (250/2 - assuming 50% is garbage like the bittorrent and netflix examples)
I doubt the government is monitoring people's internet traffic like this, I suspect the NSA is doing data profiling on general data coming off phone records, and maybe even profiling certain characteristics of traffic, and then if they find something drilling down, otherwise they would not be able to do much of anything, there is just too much data.
Well of course. There's going to be scanners checking for this and that with an attempt to check as many high level characteristics as possible before raising a flag to "drill down". It's that "drill down" operation that concerns me. One possible flag is, "He's running against me in the next election". I also suspect that you have no big data experience either but honestly neither do I and neither do any of my acquaintances... I'm afraid our relevant skill sets are around the security, network engineering and legal. However, it hardly matters. For now if they can just archive it all it wont' be long before the required processing power is available if it isn't now. And it's not an all or nothing proposition.
I don't think the NSA or anyone has the big brother capabilities some are afraid of, but they have enough power with what they can do that we should be concerned.
Again, I agree. They don't have enough to create my magic crystal ball viewing machine quite yet. They're scrambling to build it as fast as they can. You are right to be concerned though given that all this time we've been discussing tapping the entire internet. Obviously they could do much with only a tiny fraction of that. Crap, facebook and google alone (back to PRISM) would tell much of my life story.
Jeff-
ATT is just one communications backbone and the simplified backbone diagrams like yours make it seem easy, because you could say "Okay,I'll have tap points on the nodes on the graph map above, and will see any packets that come through any point". Problem is, this is just one backbone, there are fiber optic networks galore out there that carry the Internet, so a packet could go from My machine, over an ATT backbone, pass through a router on another machine, get routed through Verizon fiber, could pass another router and get sent to Canada, through a machine there, to another backbone to California....it is why tapping into the ISP's is more logical, if they have a general view of things, and drill down, and figure out someone is sending from someone using Comcast in upstate NY, they can use the taps they have in comcast to monitor their traffic.
My point simply was that on the backbone itself, the kind of monitoring being mentioned is not really possible, but in terms of analyzing data patterns and drilling down, no problem. If someone for example was running against someone and had influence with the NSA, it would be no big deal to get dirt. First of all, the NSA can monitor cell phone conversations (though they are not supposed to monitor domestic ones, they can), and it would be pretty easy to figure out that Joe Smith is on Optimum Online in Long Island, and get data from their servers on e-mail and browsing and so forth, doesn't even take much drilling down, to be honest.
Where I do have a problem is suppose we get some Jesus freak who decides they don't like kinky sex, and basically has the NSA do a broad search on people hitting certain kinky web sites (like this one), then drills down, traces back messages from point of origination, figures out who we are, and uses that power to out people, make their lives miserable..the tools they are using to find 'suspicious' terroristic activity could be used to try and track down people they don't like, whether it is tea party groups and their members or civil rights groups. During the 60's and 70's the FBI targeted the ACLU , including illegal wiretaps and monitoring, because Hoover and his successor thought the ACLU was a communist front group *shrug*.
I think the real concern is who is watching the watchers....among other things, the judges on FISA, and congressmen, are not great watchdogs, because guess what, if someone wanted to, they could make sure that key people were compromised and would rubber stamp their outrageous behavior. Again, might seem like a Robert Ludlum novel, but ask yourself how J.Edgar Hoover stayed in office so long, with all the shit he pulled, and you have a pretty good idea of why I am concerned.
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RE: Is the Govt. "tapping" the Internet? - 
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