Re:The Guardian walks back claims of direct NSA access to se...
by samstave on Thursday June 13, 2013 @09:41PM
(#5877833)
>"how much of that signal are they (a) storing indefinitely, (b) DPI or SSL decrypting, and (c) merely keyword analyzing.
I think this probably nails it - but in reverse order:
They peel a stream off, keyword analyze it - in conjunction with other weights (i.e. who is talking, to whom, between where, what medium, when (i.e. the meta data)) and then they store the key ones.
If I am talking to my Grandma, the drop it. If I am talking to an unknown number in [foreign country] they test for keywords, if any are hits - they store it and add more meta-data.
I mean - the whole thing is what I understood the Mythical Project Echelon to be -- but there was never any concrete evidence of Echelon to the degree that it was rumored to be, until now.
Now we know that they definitely trap any packet they can wrangle.
The tech side of HOW they are seeing everything is inconsequential to the fact that they ARE seeing everything crossing the pipes.
I think this probably nails it - but in reverse order:
They peel a stream off, keyword analyze it - in conjunction with other weights (i.e. who is talking, to whom, between where, what medium, when (i.e. the meta data)) and then they store the key ones.
If I am talking to my Grandma, the drop it. If I am talking to an unknown number in [foreign country] they test for keywords, if any are hits - they store it and add more meta-data.
I mean - the whole thing is what I understood the Mythical Project Echelon to be -- but there was never any concrete evidence of Echelon to the degree that it was rumored to be, until now.
Now we know that they definitely trap any packet they can wrangle.
The tech side of HOW they are seeing everything is inconsequential to the fact that they ARE seeing everything crossing the pipes.