Posted by thm 2 days ago
dozens upon dozens fired for no reason
so US "intelligence" is going to go even further backwards
* https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-acting-ch...
November is going to be insanity
What kind of sick joke is that
When you want to reorient the government, it's much easier doing it with a smaller more loyal force. Now introduce tools that make mass surveillance easier and less accountable.
Like that's not a bad thing for them, that's what they want to do.
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Back to the article, I'm not shocked that a massive LLM company speed running into the brick wall that is the US government; just thought it would be OpenAI, but Sam Altman is truly the best bottom feeder the game.
Also fully believe that Anthropic is hoping that public sentiment is on their side but more Americans hate AI companies than Trump so it's not going to go how they want.
Give it maybe 3-6 months before the Trump Admin talks about openly nationalizing Anthropic.
When you say without reason do you mean without cause?
Yes. But unlike the rest of us, NSA didn't have to if the administration had thought about it for 30 seconds before sending their letter. It's a stupid own-goal.
I have no doubt they're working on a passport submission flow as fast as they can now.
The DPA only gives that power to the President [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
This would not be a particularly big stretch here, either.
Understatement. They have 14 offices, only 4 of them are in the US (6 are in EMEA, 4 in APAC).
Did Hegseth pull his supply-chain risk BS?
The US constitution also prohibits:
- refusing to spend money that congress has appropriated
- dismantling congressionally-created federal agencies without congressional authorization
- directing federal agencies to selectively apply the law according to the preference of the executive
- giving control of federal agencies to individuals who have not been appointed by the legislative branch
- terminating, detaining, or deporting people without due process
- retaliation against private citizens or corporations for speech protected under the first amendment
- discriminating on protected grounds under the equal protections clause
... and yet the administration has done all these things with impunity while effete judges wring their hands and write sternly-worded letters. The US constitution demonstrably no longer has any force or effect.
Propaganda.
No, they don't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Yeah, they did (and probably do).
Are you suggesting they broke TLS or that they've somehow acquired every private cert generated?
Plot twist: _Perhaps_ Mythos / Fable keeps explaining ways (that we can't comprehend or don't always work) to break HTTPS due to the three letter agencies making sure they had input on their creation (and thus backdoors, I mean "bugs"), so the real catastrophe they are hiding is that HTTPS is broken (for most people, most of the time.)
Remember when Quantum computing was the threat to HTTPS? Turns out it was the humans own inability to think outside of the box!
It just doesn't protect you all that well from nation-scale adversaries.
There's really no way this conspiracy theory works if "they" have a copy of every single private cert generated. Which would be impressive because I can generate one myself and get it trusted without ever sending it and would be easily able to detect a MITM attack.
Not to mention most sites are going to use pinned certs so any repeat visitors to a site will notice a cert change associated with a MITM.
This whole idea relies on the assumption that everyone is trusting third parties with their private certs. That is not at all required.
I'm not sure why your focus is so heavily on your server. Is that the only thing on the internet you care about?
> Not to mention most sites are going to use pinned certs so any repeat visitors to a site will notice a cert change associated with a MITM.
Most haven't even heard of pinned certs.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3517745.3561439
"we find that 0.9% to 8% of Android apps and 2.5% to 11% of iOS apps use certificate pinning at run time"
The long game. They:
- make sure you wouldn't be in a position to need to transmit data anywhere that would receive it without CA's in their hypothetical pocket
- manage the evolution of the cloud industry to make sure portable VM's and Containers can have their data archived (both in-RAM, disk, hey just send us the running VM!)
- backdoor'd encryption algorithms from the design and implementation phase to ensure a global unlocking mechanism for any data encrypted by anybody who used a large class of extremely commonly available software
So, you run your own private bank in a cloud VM with tenant managed keys? They backdoor'd the encryption algorithm your cloud VM disk relies on, because they blackmailed one of the developers at the company who developed the hypervisor system used by your provider. Open source project? Perfect. (If you think this is nonsense, then remember the rapid discovery of ancient "bugs" causing all this drama to begin with.)
Your TLS privately generated certs that are 100% foolproof aren't actually used anywhere encrypting the data they want, because it's either worthless, or, available elsewhere perhaps at a different (or same) time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)
If you're a specific target of a nation-state level actor, things get worse; they just grab your hardware mid-shipment on its way to you.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/report-nsa-intercepts...
And failed.
> If you're a specific target...
If you're a specific target, they have to spend an incredibly number of man-hours and money to get into your private data. This proves my point. This shows the effort required to infiltrate _one_ target and you're suggesting they've infiltrated everything by default.
How would you know about the successes? Thinking this is the one and only time they tried it is... interesting.
(Plus: "it was, for seven years, one of four CSPRNGs standardized in NIST SP 800-90A")
> If you're a specific target, they have to spend an incredibly number of man-hours and money to get into your private data.
No, this demonstrates an actor of that power level doesn't even need to compromise encryption, and can get deeper access to everything, if it's worth it to them.
If I have a box at Digital Ocean and I'm communicating with it with TLS1.3 using a Let's Encrypt cert that I generated, where, exactly, does this magical MITM box come into play?
Do you know what hypervisor is managing it? :)
And these days (especially post-Snowden), many (most?) companies encrypt data when sending between servers within their own (private network) infrastructure.
Yours and others' claims that it's impossible and nonsensical is based on lack of understanding.
Yours and others' claims that things somehow got better after Snowden is just a completely baseless statement - if you actually looked into what happened post-Snowden - absolutely nothing was done to prevent NSA spying on any communications they want, in fact it got significantly worse.
lol, no, it's really not.
> Also when talking about encryption between servers within datacenters you seem to be missing that in order for such multi -stage/path encryption (separate certs/keys) to be possible the data first has to be decrypted at each point
Why would I want the data to be decrypted at each point and why would datacenters do that? Encrypting and decrypting data is expensive computationally, so that's not how things work at all. There's no need to decrypt data to know where it needs to go. That's why we have TCP/IP and other similar stadards.
The datacenters can maybe add another layer of encryption on top of my data as its moving around their networks, but there's absolutely no way for them to strip off my encryption.
> Yours and others' claims that things somehow got better after Snowden is just a completely baseless statement
Things didn't magically get better. A lot of people worked hard to improve the overall security posture of the industry.
Yeah it definitely is lol.
> Why would I want the data to be decrypted at each point and why would datacenters do that?
When we talk about data that is sent for processing to a 3p server (like anthropic in this case) the data obviously needs to be decrypted to be processed.
As to why data is decrypted at each point in a typical large backend system - because other than network routing there are presumably multiple services that need to receive and act on this data somehow - you're not just sending encrypted data around to random servers.
> there's absolutely no way for them to strip off my encryption.
You don't seem to understand that you have no control over the encryption or decryption done on the backends of cloud services you use. I don't know how to make it more simple and obvious at this point.
Again, the context here is Anthropic and sending your data to their (or any other big tech API). But even if we move away from this model and suppose you are running your own services on rented cloud VM - then it should be obvious that you don't have full control or even access to this VM... any actor with access can install or modify any software, install/modify EBPF, modified crypto libraries, etc. - you have absolutely no control or say over this.
> Things didn't magically get better.
Things didn't get better at all, they got much worse.
I think they mean the data must have existed in plain text before it was encrypted, and will exist in plain text after it is decrypted.
At some point “your” server in a datacenter somewhere needs to decrypt the data to do something useful with it, after all you’re paying for compute, and homeomorphic encryption is too slow, so the work is done in unencrypted data.
There it is. Your data in plain text in RAM.
TLS will protect your data in transit, but it can’t protect you against a compromised recipient.
They could just do this to the specific servers they want, at specific times.
Just like wiretapping didn’t mean listening to every phone, and every conversation.
It's too complicated. Do you know everything about CA, SSL, HTTPS, and so on? You make $250k a year working on it? Do you _really_, _really_, know everything? Then you're fired because you're lying to yourself, so you're probably unbearable to work with.
We were all freaking out about this with AT&T Thing nearly twenty years ago: and when nobody cared (Bush ran two terms! it helped to pretend AT&T was the only one affected), it gave "them" implicit permission to do it again with Google / Yahoo thing (it helped to pretend those were the only two cloud providers affected) ten years ago.
Now, we're all pretending that capitalism is real, and that the three letter agencies are just sittin' on the sidelines, while the world's largest data archiving opportunity is happening voluntarily (some are even PAYING for it!), at some wild-growth companies (with leaders who have too much to lose), who also have existed for just a few years? A 5 year old could probably blackmail Sam Altman, what about all the other middle management? The individual contributors (if they still exist) are of no concern: work is a commodity, it's easy to silo a worker's knowledge.
Surveillance opportunity is 10x social media from last decade, because they still have social media, and now, they've began thinking for people. How easy when it is an app on your smartphone. Those mind control experiments back in the 60's with Acid are looking silly by now. Besides, how do you know that the response you're getting wasn't manipulated (and define 'manipulated' across a spectrum of training to nefarious actors impersonating models, by power of court order.)
If you think all of that is unfounded ridiculous blasphemy, let me distract you with this instead: if the AI bubble bursts, the compute will be repurposed for mass AI / ML driven CCTV surveillance. Hell, maybe they'll find a way to give you a tax break if you sell your CCTV footage.
"NSA literally has MITM proxies/interception of any traffic they want inside every major US tech company" even if this statement is an exaggeration, by playing the long game, they get themselves setup to access what they want in the future.
I'm not for or against, but I do live in a safe place thanks to such surveillance (generally in the USA), and I want you to know that this AI Thing is only the latest chapter in the intelligence story.
As for the rest of this... how many conspiracy theories are you trying to pack into a statement?
> "even if this statement is an exaggeration"
It's not an exaggeration, it is simply false.
To be clear, the claim you're making is that because Twitter has their third corporate office in the same building as an AT&T switching center, and US intelligence used a room in AT&T's switching center for surveillance, then Twitter must have been controlled by US intelligence? And thus the Arab Spring uprising, where Twitter was used, was "fully a CIA/NSA operation"?
The CIA venture arm InQTel invested in Dataminr a company that twitter was also a major shareholder. https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-inves...
Some of us actually work in security, while others think the NSA and CIA are some magically powerful orgs.
Explain how, even with the mystical Room 641A, the NSA can't break a TLS1.3 protected communication channel without either party knowing about it. Assume you have generated a cert with Let's Encrypt. How, exactly, does that work?
now say you're doing this on a raspberry pi or other openhardware like a librum machine with a yubikey hsm on local wifi or physical ethernet... you may have a shot at the privacy you're looking for.
There are also multiple ways/places traffic you send to typical cloud/tech company is decrypted and can be intercepted. (Surprised I have to point this out to someone who 'actually works in security ' lol)
Not to mention US tech companies fully cooperate with the NSA in many cases and are aware of this going on.
I mean, there's goal post moving and there's just building a whole new stadium across the country.
What we learned from that era includes things like
(1) spy agencies are incredibly aggressive and pursue tons of different angles to get access to things
(2) spy agencies have a lot of money
(3) spy agencies often have interpretations of law that would surprise the public or legal experts (and sometimes courts have issued sealed rulings permitting them to do things that surprise the public or legal experts later when they're unsealed)
(4) some people throughout different parts of society assume culturally that companies in a country "should" generally help the spy agencies of that country's government because they are the "good guys" or "on the same team" or whatever
These things are all pretty bad and scary, but they still don't imply absolutely infinite power or access, because all of them come with different kinds of pushback. People also just tell them no!
I want to write an article with a colleague about the continuing role of culture here, because I think there are companies or industries where the default reaction is to want to cooperate with the government, and others where the default reaction is not that.
There are certainly secret things that have never come out, e.g. whatever Senator Wyden keeps alluding to, and what kind of program or authority was behind the interception of hardware shipments to covertly tamper with them, and whether there is a bulk financial data interception program, and presumably lots of other stuff. I don't agree with these things, and I want them to be exposed and stopped, and I also don't think they constitute infinite power over all parts of the tech industry.
Sorry everyone: but the conspiracy is so obviously not, it's nauseating to admit, because you see all your friends, family and co workers dumping so much everyday data into these services.
IPO incoming.
the nsa has an unlimited budget and spend a good portion of that budget recruiting some of the smartest people in the country. while they dont have super powers, they also arent the town cop who took a 6 month course after high school then joined the force.
it does no good to hold them up as mythical figures. it also does no good to pretend they are bumbling idiots.
(every math phd i am acquainted with has been approached by nsa recruiters. none of them have been approached by police agencies.)
No they don't, and if you're going to try to argue something with that as your opener, it very easily casts large amounts of skepticism on whatever you are about to say.
Perhaps you're exaggerating for effect, but that also undermines your point.
if you read my comment like we're having a normal conversation instead of a thesis defense, you'll get my point just fine.
Some of the smartest people I know have worked on fighting NSA, but they had a drastically smaller budget than NSA itself, and the mental availability bias is skewed by the fact that the "fighting NSA" people talked about their work all the time, while the "being NSA" people generally didn't.
I do know one extremely smart person who went to work there, and I witnessed a failed recruitment of another extremely smart person.
how many of them took them up on the offer, and how many are in leadership roles?
it takes a very narrow range of personality to want to be a cop, which at the end of the day is a government job... the only people they make rich are contractors
I'm not saying there aren't smart people working there but it's ridiculous to assume they have an iron grasp on all communication from the top tech companies in the world, while also monitoring half the world's governments... they just don't
this is not really relevant to the point, but to satisfy your curiosity: more than one, and one.
>it takes a very narrow range of personality to want to be a cop
the nsa's brightest aren't doing "cop" things. certainly none of the people i know of working there are "cop-minded" in any sense.
they are doing cool research and application things. otherwise they wouldn't be able to entice the phds to stick around. these are people that want to work at the forefront of their field, doing interesting work, and the nsa is one avenue of doing that (with good job security, benefits, etc.).
>it's ridiculous to assume they have an iron grasp on all communication from the top tech companies in the world, while also monitoring half the world's governments
we agree here. they are certainly doing "HNDL" (harvest now, decrypt later) at a very large scale. but obviously they are not able to collect and store every piece of communication at every tech company over years and years. (the intelligence community comprehensive national cybersecurity initiative data center is large, but not that large)
What? That's not only relevant to the point, it's incredibly relevant. If the NSA is only able to recruit 2% of the math PhDs they approach, then that's important information.
"More than one" is not particularly useful; you seem to be dodging the question because it undermines your argument.
telling you exactly how many people i know in the NSA is also not particularly useful. i'm one guy. there is no statistically significant information from my answer.
>you seem to be dodging the question because it undermines your argument.
my "argument" is that there are plenty of smart people in the NSA. that's it. i am confused why that is seemingly so offensive to you that you had to reply twice.
In my cohort? Several, and who knows? The recruitment effort is very visible and intense.
The US math phd market has been a slow-rolling disaster for over a decade. Everyone who can hack it outside the ivory tower is actively looking for the exits.
So why is it surprising that some of them go to work at the NSA?
> it takes a very narrow range of personality to want to be a cop, which at the end of the day is a government job... the only people they make rich are contractors
I don’t think you have context on what math phds are making in entry level positions, post-docs, or adjuncting. I just picked a random entry level NSA role on LinkedIn (doctorate + 0 yrs) and they’re offering solid six digits. There are tenured faculty (post-doc(s) + 5ish yrs) who don’t make that.
Any citations to your statement that NSA produces nothing? Or do you have a strong argument or evidence to support this?