Jan 27, 2014, 18:15 pm
Just hours after the NY Times/the Guardian and Pro Publica released their stories about Snowden documents revealing the NSA and GCHQ spying on mobile apps, NBC News, working with Glenn Greenwald, revealed a different bunch of Snowden documents concerning how the NSA and GCHQ are collecting unencrypted data concerning YouTube views, Facebook likes and Twitter messages via the taps they have on various internet backbone cables. These are not from the companies themselves, but rather because the data travels unencrypted across the internet, which the NSA and GCHQ grab because they can:
![[Image: GNEcmcf.png]](http://i.imgur.com/GNEcmcf.png)
![[Image: viiTduw.png]](http://i.imgur.com/viiTduw.png)
According to the report, GCHQ insists that when it's scooping up this kind of data, it's just using it in the aggregate to look up interesting data, connections and trends, rather than spying on anyone individually, but of course, once they have that data, if someone becomes "of interest", it's not difficult to go back and dig through it.
The reporters reached out to multiple tech companies, who note that they had nothing to do with this. That's true, as it seems clear that the information was gleaned from the taps placed on the backbone, with the help of the giant telcos, rather than the internet companies. However, at this point, it seems time for any company to recognize that if any bit of data is not being encrypted, the NSA/GCHQ is looking through it. Google, once again, seems particularly upset to discover this was going on, after it had pushed back on attempts by the UK to set up data retention rules for this kind of purpose -- when it's clear that GCHQ was already doing it anyway.
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The NBC News report includes some sort of bizarre presentation (mostly images, without the associated text) concerning using this information to understand the psychology of folks on the internet. They even use Lolcats. Yes, in one of the strangest sights you may see, here's a "top secret" lolcat image used by the NSA.
The reporters reached out to multiple tech companies, who note that they had nothing to do with this. That's true, as it seems clear that the information was gleaned from the taps placed on the backbone, with the help of the giant telcos, rather than the internet companies. However, at this point, it seems time for any company to recognize that if any bit of data is not being encrypted, the NSA/GCHQ is looking through it. Google, once again, seems particularly upset to discover this was going on, after it had pushed back on attempts by the UK to set up data retention rules for this kind of purpose -- when it's clear that GCHQ was already doing it anyway.
Quote: A source close to Google added that Google was “shocked” because the company had pushed back against British legislation that would have required Google to store its metadata and other information for U.K. government use. The legislation, introduced by Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012, was publicly repudiated by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in 2013 and has never become law. May hopes to reintroduce a modified version this spring.While it may have been reasonable in the past to assume that if the government wasn't asking for this information via the front door, the info was safe, given both of the big stories of the day, it seems that every online company needs to get much more serious about encryption.
“It’s extremely surprising,” said the source, “that while they were pushing for the data via the law, they might have simultaneously been using their capability to grab it anyway.”
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