XMission's Ashdown Talks About NSA Snooping Hardware, Gag Orders Tuesday Jul 23 2013 09:03 EDT As we noted recently, independent Utah ISP Xmission and its founder Pete Ashdown have been getting a lot of press lately for doing something that most ISPs can't be bothered to do: stand up for consumer privacy and against over-the-top NSA snooping. Now Buzzfeed has another interesting story, with Ashdown himself explaining about a specific time he couldn't fend off the NSA and had to install snooping gear on his company's network. As Ashdown explains, the gear the NSA installed had no real limits to data collection, and he wasn't (and perhaps still isn't) technically allowed to talk about it with anyone: quote: I'm not sure it had any access to the internet, so they could manage it remotely, but if they requested that, we would have facilitated them. I’m sure it was just capturing the entire stream to hard disk for later analysis. After the initial install, they didn't come in again until it was removed. It was open ended. I called six months into it and said, "How long is this going to go on?" and they said, "I don’t know." It went on for nine months. If it were still there, I would have probably smashed it by now. There have been no [related] arrests that I have heard of.
Ashdown also again discusses the need for at least some transparency in this kind of snooping: quote: These programs that violate the Bill of Rights can continue because people can’t go out and say, "This is my experience, this is what happened to me, and I don’t think it is right." There is absolutely [a] need for secrecy when you are dealing with a criminal investigation. You don’t want to tip off criminals being monitored. But you can’t say, "You can never talk about this ever, for the rest of your life." The FISA court should be a public court, and documents should be sealed for a set period of time, [to] let people audit the actions later.
Other than perhaps Sonic.net and Nicholas Merrill's war on NSL gags, nobody in this industry is putting up much of a fight against the government's aggressive attempts to spy on everyone, all the time. Surely Ashdown has a lovely audit waiting for him down the line as a reward. |
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Gag orderI sure hope Pete isn't violating any rules by talking about it now. | |
| | morboComplete Your Transaction join:2002-01-22 00000 |
morbo
Member
2013-Jul-23 10:16 am
Re: Gag orderHe is likely thinking they can't arrest everyone. Maybe this will prompt other small business owners to speak up. | |
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GlobalMindDomino Dude, POWER Systems Guy Premium Member join:2001-10-29 Indianapolis, IN |
OH coolSo it was run on IBM x servers...nice. | |
| MaynardKrebsWe did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee. Premium Member join:2009-06-17 |
Convenient 'voltage' spikeSomebody should have removed all XMission gear from the rack, and then had a UPS go 'haywire' and blast the NSA gear with 1MM volts @ 500A. Since XMission had no authorization to touch the NSA stuff, there'd be no way XMission would know (or care) if it was still operating - and apparently neither would the NSA until they came to collect their box.
The data they collected couldn't have been to 'urgent' if they had no outbound network comms. XMission should have run Wireshark to see what the NSA might have been sending home. | |
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Re: Convenient 'voltage' spikesaid by MaynardKrebs:Somebody should have removed all XMission gear from the rack, and then had a UPS go 'haywire' and blast the NSA gear with 1MM volts @ 500A. Since XMission had no authorization to touch the NSA stuff, there'd be no way XMission would know (or care) if it was still operating - and apparently neither would the NSA until they came to collect their box.
The data they collected couldn't have been to 'urgent' if they had no outbound network comms. XMission should have run Wireshark to see what the NSA might have been sending home. As a general rule, never screw with these people. They lie for a living. | |
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Re: Convenient 'voltage' spikeand they the NSA can blame that on some cleaning services company that used Illegal and uses that to shut Xmission down and take of all the gear. | |
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to MaynardKrebs
Good way to get your car Jerry-rigged so that it plows over 100 mph into a telephone poll. And that actually happened. | |
| | | GeekJediRF is Good For You Premium Member join:2001-06-21 Mukwonago, WI |
GeekJedi
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 5:00 pm
Re: Convenient 'voltage' spikedouble post | |
| | | | GeekJedi |
GeekJedi
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 5:01 pm
Re: Convenient 'voltage' spikesaid by biochemistry:Good way to get your car Jerry-rigged so that it plows over 100 mph into a telephone poll. And that actually happened. [citation needed] | |
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to MaynardKrebs
said by MaynardKrebs:Somebody should have removed all XMission gear from the rack, and then had a UPS go 'haywire' and blast the NSA gear with 1MM volts @ 500A. Since XMission had no authorization to touch the NSA stuff, there'd be no way XMission would know (or care) if it was still operating - and apparently neither would the NSA until they came to collect their box.
The data they collected couldn't have been to 'urgent' if they had no outbound network comms. XMission should have run Wireshark to see what the NSA might have been sending home. Oops, the breaker somehow just popped and since we can't "touch" it, we didn't reset it. Sorry. | |
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Our Lovable GovermentNice to see that Yahoo, stood up with De-Classifying the documents and now Xmission standing up for their customer's, if all company's would do this, it would put the government back in their place, Working for us. | |
| | ArrayListDevOps Premium Member join:2005-03-19 Mullica Hill, NJ |
Re: Our Lovable Govermentbullshit. these companies are just trying to save face. They have no obligations to their customers other than providing the service that is being paid for. | |
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Re: Our Lovable GovermentPeople have an obligation to their fellow man. People like you that think it's every man for himself are the people that will see humanity go extinct. Pete's a good guy and he's pointing out these NSLs are evil. Of course we knew that already because a guy had to sue the government just so he could tell his lawyer about the letter.
None of this data is being used for Terrorism. Of all the uses of the patriot act 99.9999% of them involve drugs and other ordinary crime, in fact as far as I know there hasn't been a single terrorism conviction related to the patriot act expansion of powers, but they sure are putting a lot of druggies in jail.
Some of us have been against the Patriot Act since the beginning, and some of us believe we have an obligation to society and our nation. | |
| | | | ArrayListDevOps Premium Member join:2005-03-19 Mullica Hill, NJ |
Re: Our Lovable Govermenthumans have that obligation. Business has no humanity. | |
| | | | | yaplej Premium Member join:2001-02-10 White City, OR |
yaplej
Premium Member
2013-Jul-24 11:54 am
Re: Our Lovable Govermentsaid by ArrayList:humans have that obligation. Business has no humanity. Business are run by humans. Some are reasonable and some are greedy **** wads. The larger the business more of the latter end up running it. | |
| | | | | | ArrayListDevOps Premium Member join:2005-03-19 Mullica Hill, NJ |
Re: Our Lovable GovermentHumans are cruel. | |
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