Comment by fiatmoney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fiatmoney | Hacker News Reader

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Because of this. It's likely the NSA is actively subverting American companies.

"The most controversial revelation in Sentry Eagle might be a fleeting reference to the NSA infiltrating clandestine agents into “commercial entities.” The briefing document states that among Sentry Eagle’s most closely guarded components are “facts related to NSA personnel (under cover), operational meetings, specific operations, specific technology, specific locations and covert communications related to SIGINT enabling with specific commercial entities (A/B/C).”

It is not clear whether these “commercial entities” are American or foreign or both. Generally the placeholder “(A/B/C)” is used in the briefing document to refer to American companies, though on one occasion it refers to both American and foreign companies. Foreign companies are referred to with the placeholder “(M/N/O).” The NSA refused to provide any clarification to The Intercept."

This article seems a bit speculative. They don't seem to know for sure that "(A/B/C)" means American companies in this case. Everything else just seems like commentary from themselves and other security experts.

As for foreign companies, it's pretty obvious that NSA and CIA have been conducting operations like these for many decades.

I'm not going to argue that the NSA has not subverted American companies before (see DUAL_EC_DRBG), but this does not provide definitive proof that they're actively infiltrating homeland companies with human spies.

It's not all that speculative - it agrees what was in prior leaks that claim that American companies are routinely infiltrated. Also remember that the authors of these articles have read huge volumes of Snowden documents have have not been publicly released and that the security experts (likely referencing Schneier here) are not just guys working in private industry. If you work in the security space you very quickly begin to interoperate with past- and current- military and government personnel. Schneier testifies as an expert witness on these things before congress and Greenwald is an ex-Constitutional lawyer. In short they have the pedigree to make these assertions.

For the record I don't agree with the parent. I think the important thing about this document is that it lays out the broad tactical tools used in US cyberintelligence strategy. It's handing off some major tactical playbook material.

It looks pretty speculative to me. Directly from this article: "The most controversial revelation in Sentry Eagle might be a fleeting reference to the NSA infiltrating clandestine agents into “commercial entities.”", "It is not clear whether these “commercial entities” are American or foreign or both." and "The document makes no other reference to NSA agents working under cover. It is not clear whether they might be working as full-time employees at the “commercial entities,” or whether they are visiting commercial facilities under false pretenses."

The author is also picking quotes from different programs and mashing them together to come up with their speculation. Note how the commercial entities are discussed under the "Sentry Owl" program on page 7, but the "covert or under cover" quote comes from the "Sentry Osprey" section on the last page, which appears to be talking about the NSA working with the CIA. If NSA employees were working with the CIA on anything outside the US, it would make sense that they'd be undercover. Maybe they are infiltrating companies, but the source document doesn't support that assertion.

Schneier isn't name-dropped at all in the article. I find it odd that they would quote Matt Green and Chris Soghoian by name, but mix in the opinions of someone as well-known as Bruce Schneier without mentioning his name anywhere.

It's not really speculative. Remember that previous leaks showed definitively that the NSA had broken into Google and Yahoo, notwithstanding they had some partnerships/participation from them.

Bruce Schneier was given an opportunity to meet and review a large collection of documents but yes its true we don't really know.

The previous leaks did not definitely show anything like that. In fact its not clear they showed anything beyond an informational briefing on issues with intercepting Google related data.

There's a Chinese whispers effect to all this where vague assertions are repeated over and over until they become considered definite facts.

"This is a major leap forward in the NSA's ability to exploit Facebook using FISA and FAA authorities" - NSA

"...by exploiting inherent weaknesses in Facebook's security model." - GCHQ

http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPl...

That's Facebook. The Yahoo and Google stuff has been very widely reported and are direct from Greenwald and the Snowden leaks. Other links (in particular the PKH link) contain other information.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...

It doesn't matter if the companies are American or not.

When will Americans realize that 96% of the global population are "foreigners", and are still considered human.

Right. But that's not new information. Prior Snowden leaks (and leaks by others) have showed conclusively that the NSA targets and infiltrates American corporations and also partners heavily with them.

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