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Comment by mrt0mat0 | Hacker News Reader

I asked this in a deeper thread, but i would like to reask anyone that can explain. If the NSA is tapping pipelines as it seems they are, wouldn't the sources such as facebook and google all come online at the same time? if they were in fact referring to the pipeline access as their way into facebook and company, why did they all have different onboarding times? wouldn't they have all come on at the same time: the time when they tapped the pipelines? Maybe i misunderstand the process. I get that maybe they had to write some interface that interpreted the packets and sorted them as such, but that wouldn't take years.

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My interpretation is that the NSA basically have two main forms of collection: data directly from fibre intercepts, and data obtained (via voluntary agreement, court order, or otherwise) from private companies. This slide [1] would certainly suggest such an arrangement.

The fibre intercepts would fairly easily give access to HTTP traffic, and Facebook/Google/etc. would probably 'come online' at about the same time (there will likely be some differences as it appears there is a need to code a plug-in/processing engine for each major source to pull out usernames etc.[2])

What exactly the dates in the PRISM slide mean is somewhat unclear without more information. It could be, for example the date that the first court order is made, or the date when the company provides to the NSA a more automated way to query the data. I doubt that those dates are related to the fibre intercepts though.

[1] https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

[2] https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video...

so if that's the case, then it would seem that facebook, google, etc. are still lying? or could this be more gag order stuff?

No it would not... At this point, it seems quite feasible that Facebook, Google, et al., are telling the truth at least in some respect. The point is that there are TWO different forms of data collection: PRISM and XKeyscore. PRISM happens via court order and is what we've heard about primarily up until today. XKeyscore is a separate program and does not require the compliance of Google, Facebook, et al. In fact, it doesn't even require their knowledge.

The key now is to see who exactly is letting the NSA tap their network hubs to sniff the entire Internet. These will be your Internet Service Providers...

The ISPs might not have a choice either, thanks to CALEA.

Definitely. Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't mean to imply either way, but looking back, I did use some unfortunate phrasing.

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