See my post below -- I have been tracking Eschelon since the early 90s...
Guess what NSA router backdoors have become (mobile phones with socialifelog media apps on them)
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And like @tptacek said
>>If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chains lowering you into the shark tank.
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Love that but, I do think that both is true...
Look incompetent so they don't think you're competent (Stuxnet/DUQU)
I mistook the building, but I do remember details that Twitter had a direct fiber connection to that room...
Also, we have a LOT of evidence of prior NSA backdoors and interceptions...
in 1998 I had to hire a CSIE (cisco expert) (like a 3 digit uuid) to help me recover a router password from infra I inherited... and during the password reset procedure on a 3640 - he was telling me how "the NSA requires Cisco to put in back doors into all the routers)
((The passwd BTW was Feet4Monkey))
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Then recall Carnivore? (and its predecessor eschelon - and a whole bunch of reveals) -- what was interesting was that the only company to refuse to install Carnivor was Earthlink.net (ISP) -- and the reason they stated they wouldnt put in Carnivore, was because they stated they already had their user tracking system (They were owned by the Mormon Church) ((and for some reason Whoopi Goldberg was one of their large notable investors))
And recall how they stated that the NSA specifically likes to hire Mormons?
And recall North First Street DC that was purchased by Cerberus Group which was the ~Bush-Cabal hedgie, and the reason they bought it because it housed MAE WEST and they wanted to inject NBAR/Surveilling into it -- once they completed that, they sold it off again (To one of their subs, IIRC)
I hate that I am getting old and I start to forget a lot of the malfeasance I have witnessed in my ~30+ years in SV.
Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41507188 - Sept 2024 (5 comments)
The secrets of Room 641A (2008) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305501 - Nov 2023 (4 comments)
Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984515 - Sept 2022 (2 comments)
Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23350120 - May 2020 (70 comments)
Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12515724 - Sept 2016 (75 comments)
Room 641A - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847166 - June 2013 (44 comments)