[HN Gopher] The FBI's internal guide for getting data from AT&T,...
___________________________________________________________________
The FBI's internal guide for getting data from AT&T, T-Mobile,
Verizon
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 506 points
Date : 2021-10-25 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| NN88 wrote:
| Anyone get the sense we're in a post-Wikileaks era?
|
| These leaks seem... like they would get someone indicted...
| ab_testing wrote:
| Reading through these charts, it looks like MetroPCS is the most
| secure provider.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Metro is owned by T-Mobile, and operates using T-Mobile's
| network. Why would it be any more secure than T-Mobile?
|
| As far as I understand, there are 3 mobile networks in the US
| (Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile), and the MVNO's are just a mechanism
| to price discriminate. Different customers are sliced into
| various priorities and willingness/ability to pay, so the 3
| mobile networks can most accurately collect the most money
| according to each individual's ability and willingness to pay
| for a certain level of priority on the network.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I love Metro, have used them for years. $60 for unlimited
| everything with 20GB tethered 4G hotspot data, and you get free
| Amazon Prime with your account. This chart has just solidified
| how great they are to me.
| einpoklum wrote:
| And as for the NSA internal guide for getting data from AT&T,
| T-Mobile and Verizon - that's a bit shorter:
|
| > _Do nothing, we already have this data loaded and indexed._
| fossuser wrote:
| In the US people are more pro-company and anti-government so
| retention policies tend to require the companies to retain the
| data for a period of time so warrants can request it if
| necessary.
|
| In the EU people are more pro-government and anti-company so the
| government is more likely to have access.
|
| The US process for access is sometimes tied to FISA.
|
| I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I think I'd generally prefer
| companies handling retention and government having to request
| access rather than the other way around. Assuming (probably a big
| assumption) that the companies do it securely and don't fuck it
| up.
|
| The chart does make me pretty happy with T-Mobile though, and
| their 5GUC speeds are wild!
| https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1449049818857459718?...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Why are stingrays missing from the guide? Aren't they the most
| useful tool in the toolbox?
| gzer0 wrote:
| My claims are without evidence, but it certainly seems as if
| this document was created with the intentions/hope that it
| would be eventually leaked.
|
| The second slide seems rather suspicous in its placement of
| "CAST members are not qualified to testify after reading this";
| almost as if they were not speaking to an audience of CAST
| members, but rather, the public.
|
| Perhaps a decoy? to draw attention away from STINGRAY and other
| intricacies?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's pretty obvious the audience are consumers of the
| service. (ie other FBI agents)
|
| If you've ever had to testify as an expert, it's an art and a
| science. You need a lot of training to be able to respond to
| the traps attorneys will set for you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The second slide seems rather suspicous in its placement of
| "CAST members are not qualified to testify after reading
| this"; almost as if they were not speaking to an audience of
| CAST members, but rather, the public.
|
| Sounds like they are doing advance witness tampering by
| trying to get CAST members to evade calls to testify on
| material facts known to them should they receive such, not
| lobbying the public via anticipated future leak.
|
| (I'm not even sure how the statement about testimony would be
| expected to manipulate the public.)
| gzer0 wrote:
| That is a valid consideration. Touche.
| fractal618 wrote:
| Clearly they are ubiquitous at this point, and I bet their data
| goes back to inception.
| kjaftaedi wrote:
| This is an interesting point.
|
| My guess is that this looks like training material for low-
| level desk jockeys to help do all of the legwork gathering
| evidence that would be presented in court cases.
|
| Stingrays you would think would be more of a targeted operation
| and likely handled by a different group of people.
| sillycross wrote:
| > The slide also shows that AT&T retains "cloud storage
| internet/web browsing" data for 1 year.
|
| I never thought before that ISPs would really keep track of every
| user's browsing history, but apparently as cheap as the disks are
| today, this has become true. Can't think of any use of this data
| other than for mass surveillance.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I believe they can also sell the data, though there may be some
| regulations on anonymized, or sold as a group to develop
| profiles and understanding for advertising purposes.
|
| Perhaps that's what you mean by "mass surveillance", but I took
| that to mean specifically government surveillance.
| efitz wrote:
| Essentially the government has built a surveillance state by
| outsourcing it to private enterprise.
|
| I think it would be interesting to know how people really feel
| about this. I would love to see a survey that actually truly
| explained the trade-offs and see how people felt about it, eg
| avoiding the " should government be able to subpoena records from
| private business" but actually ask questions like "is it OK with
| you that with a subpoena that the government can get a list every
| website that you have visited?" And then present the trade offs
| and abuse cases. I really think that we've allowed the
| surveillance state to form without actually having a meaningful
| public debate about it.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I have hope that we here in the U.S. will be able to get out in
| front of this one. Despite all the complaining the justice
| system still mostly works and we have a libertarian streak a
| mile wide. Perhaps the thing to do is show those in power that
| they haven't escaped the dragnet...
| m0zg wrote:
| Now _this_ is a federal agency badly in need of "abolishing", not
| the inner city police.
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| It is more interesting what their procedures are for getting data
| on citizens or any user for that matter, from FAANG.
|
| And bonus question for what they do when they need to pull put
| bank statements.
| jenny91 wrote:
| > CASTViz has the ability to quickly plot call detail records and
| tower data for lead generation and investigative purposes
|
| What's the arrest funnel? Do they use Salesforce to store all
| their leads as well?
| paxys wrote:
| That seems more in Palantir's wheelhouse
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The oddly fascinating piece of trivia from all this is the
| following: voicemail has more protection ( requires an actual
| warrant ) than your internet searches.
| flotzam wrote:
| Sprint is extra chatty - from page 57 of
| https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2108...:
|
| > Ping: The network sends a message to the phones internal GPS
| receiver to report it's location (must see min. of 4 satellites.
| GPS coordinates of device and suspected radius from tower
| e-mailed(or through L-Site website) every 15 minutes for 30 days.
| Can be done manually every 5 minutes.
|
| I wonder if this is facilitated by one of those infamous "carrier
| app" backdoors included in stock OS but not e.g. in GrapheneOS:
|
| https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking
|
| https://gist.github.com/thestinger/171b5ffdc54a50ee44497028a...
|
| https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack/issues/69#issue...
| maxo133 wrote:
| this is most interesting piece of entire presentation.
|
| They can query location remotely using GPS and likely turn on
| microphone too.
| bhhaskin wrote:
| Could also be an app that runs on the sim. That would make the
| most sense.
| flotzam wrote:
| Do SIM apps really have direct access to the GPS?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| the baseband radio does, so, yes. also the camera and mic
| in many cases.
| gruez wrote:
| that works even if location is turned off in the OS itself?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| You don't even need a traditional app backdoor to do this. The
| carrier can just send the message to the baseband radio itself,
| which has a direct connection to your GPS receiver, among other
| things (usually) like the camera and microphone. That means
| these peripherals are accessible (in theory, Snowden says it
| has been done in the past) even if the main app OS is _shut
| down_.
| flotzam wrote:
| I'm not sure this is still true (on modern devices):
| https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation
|
| There's Enhanced 9-1-1 but its GPS access should be mediated
| by the OS? Hopefully?
| numpad0 wrote:
| GPS in 3G or later is integral to Baseband Processor which
| is a separate ARM CPU that runs its own RTOS. If your
| adversary gets to push BP patch over SMS you're probably
| owned no matter what OS you run on Application Processor.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| So, I'm currently in North America but with a foreign SIM, so I
| have that country's IP, most ads are in a language I can't
| understand, and McDonalds app won't let me login unless I switch
| to wifi with a local IP.
|
| This is all great, but does this mean that the local provider has
| no access to my traffic? I guess DNS is all resolved overseas
| too? How does the tunnelling work?
| kccqzy wrote:
| That tunneling is created generally for billing and metering
| purposes (for telco's benefit). A lot of cooperation between
| carriers happen in order to create that tunnel. Don't assume
| it's an encrypted tunnel.
| nickff wrote:
| This really depends on what you mean by "my traffic"; keeping
| in mind that your local provider is the ultimate man-in-the-
| middle.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I guess that's a part of the question: is my phone encrypting
| (with whatever gsm standard) to the overseas provider and the
| local provider can't really see anything, or does it go to
| the local provider in the clear and they tunnel it over to
| the overseas provider?
| nickff wrote:
| My understanding is that the A5/1 (GSM) encryption is
| applied to the communication between the device and the
| local service provider. The local service provider then
| decrypts and routes the packets.
| xxpor wrote:
| Where local service provider is just the tower.
|
| https://www.firstnet.com/power-of-firstnet/firstnet-
| advantag...
|
| >FirstNet is designed with a defense-in-depth security
| strategy that goes well beyond standard commercial
| network security measures, providing protection without
| sacrificing usability. And now, we've gone farther than
| anyone in the industry to secure public safety
| communications. FirstNet will be the first-ever network
| with comprehensive, tower-to-core encryption based on
| open industry standards.
|
| Which implies every other network doesn't encrypt that
| traffic (or does it with some proprietary scheme... which
| wouldn't give me a lot of confidence)
| [deleted]
| gzer0 wrote:
| _Sprint cannot currently translate IPV4 addresses (ex.
| 152.138.17.240) to an actual phone number
|
| Sprint may be able to translate IPV6 addresses (ex.
| 001:0db8:0000:0042:0000:8a2e:0370:7334) to a phone number._
|
| Interesting, anyone know which aspect of the IPV6 protocol allows
| for this?
| itsthecourier wrote:
| there are so many possible ipv6 public ips that absence of
| overlapping on assignation is doable and thus individual client
| determination
| bibaheu wrote:
| Probably IPv4 is on CGNAT and Sprint doesn't keep the logs of
| the translation. On IPv6 there's no NAT, and there might be a
| deterministic relationship between subscription and IP
| glogla wrote:
| That, or they don't give devices IPv4 addresses at all and
| run 464XLAT - according to Wikipedia, quite a few telcos do
| it that way.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I believe you are correct.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16440850
| p1mrx wrote:
| 464XLAT is a form of CGNAT.
|
| The main difference is whether the subscriber side uses an
| IPv6 or private IPv4 address, but on the internet side they
| are equivalent.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Joseph Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest, was jailed for not complying
| with the illegal requests of the surveillance state:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-...
|
| https://www.denverpost.com/2014/03/27/former-qwest-ceo-nacch...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
|
| And let's not forget the number of people put the jail without
| the government disclosing the use of stingrays to the defense
| attorneys:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-st...
| LogonType10 wrote:
| >jailed for not complying with the illegal requests of the
| surveillance state
|
| From the wiki page:
|
| >On March 15, 2005, Nacchio and six other former Qwest
| executives were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange
| Commission. They were accused of a $3 billion financial fraud
| between 1999 and 2002 and of benefiting from an inflated stock
| price.
| gowld wrote:
| > In its case, the government stated that Nacchio continued
| to tell Wall Street that Qwest would be able to achieve
| aggressive revenue targets long after he knew that they could
| not be achieved.
|
| Interesting that Nacchio was prosecuted for this but almost
| no one else is.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| The very same article states that he was found to have
| produced false accounting records and talked up the
| company's outlook despite knowing it was losing business
| and selling his own shares. He got caught on the insider
| trading.
|
| There's nothing noteworthy here.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| As I understand it, the explanation of the "false
| accounting records" and "losing business" had to do with
| expected government contracts vanishing because of
| refusing to cooperate about the NSA surveillance.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Losing a contract with the NSA because they didn't play
| with the NSA certainly sounds like a real thing. Telling
| the markets that they would continue to see national
| security contracts when he knew they would not is
| another. Presenting false accounting records is entirely
| unrelated and just banal fraud. Selling your own shares
| while doing these things is even worse.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| This really closes the loop. If the Feds cancelled
| contracts because of Nacchio's refusal to do business and
| then indicted him on fraud because he probably could not
| tell others that those contracts were cancelled (as with
| other similar wiretap/NSL requests)...
|
| That seems like a colossal Catch-22.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That's ridiculous. There's no NDA in the world that
| prevents you from disclosing the true financials of your
| company. You don't need to specify who you're serving.
| His charge of insider trading is because he blatantly
| lied about the company doing well to inflate the price
| while selling his shares knowing it was not.
| r00fus wrote:
| That's exactly the kind of wording that NSLs require.
| It's why the idea of a "warrant canary" [1] came into
| existence.
|
| As to the selling of shares - prima facie, that's likely
| criminal (insider selling) but I don't know the details
| of his case.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| So if I'm piecing this together correctly, he decided he
| wasn't going to help out NSA. This led to him losing
| government contracts, which would lower the value of his
| company. So instead of taking the stock price hit (which
| would be the principled thing to do), he created false
| accounting records to defraud investors. And while he was
| publicly preaching that the Qwest was just fine, he was
| unloading his own stock.
|
| And this is the guy I'm supposed to be sympathetic of?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It was well known why Google got rid of their "don't be
| evil" tagline... except now nowhere on the internet seems
| to have a record of the exact reason either...
|
| These kinds of stories get 'forgotten' very quickly.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| what on earth is this trying to imply? That google
| bleached the internet? Google got rid of the don't be
| evil tagline because it didn't fit with their corporate
| mission anymore, which was objectively more boring and
| more profit driven.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| they're probably implying it was a sort of warrant canary
| or that they did not comply with overreaching government
| wiretap requests (the assumption being that now they do).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I find that to be a pretty charming belief. It's probably
| correlated timeline wise with when such things did change
| on that, but I highly doubt it was the reason for the
| mission statement change.
| ikiris wrote:
| It was well known in telecom at the time this was due to
| the nsa situation. Don't always take things at face
| value.
| dapids wrote:
| > Don't always take things at face value.
|
| You are literally presenting an opinion at face value ...
| ikiris wrote:
| Something is not an opinion just because you don't
| believe it.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| He could easily have just acknowledged what happened and
| not sold all of his stocks to avoid insider trading while
| the nsa situation still happened. It's nice that he
| refused the nsa. Doesn't absolve him of other fraud.
| the-dude wrote:
| Wasn't there a gag order involved?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That does not prohibit you from being honest in your
| public statements about the financial health of the
| company, nor does it prevent you from following the same
| insider trading rules as everybody else.
| swarnie wrote:
| Who signs your cheques, out of interest?
| [deleted]
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| "Donald Trump is really dumb to take on the intelligence
| agencies. Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence
| community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at
| you," Schumer told MSNBC
| snuser wrote:
| he was right i wouldn't want to mess with the people behind
| covid and 9/11 either
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Imagine the founders' reaction if they heard a prominent
| senator saying that, not with regret, but exultantly, as
| though he relished the idea. I can't bring myself to accept
| that this was what they intended to launch into the world.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Washington sent an army to squash the Whiskey Rebellion,
| and John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law.
| They were quite happy to go after threats to their power.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Dead on, and those are a couple excellent illustrations
| of why, no matter how good a chief executive had been
| before taking office, you have to watch them
| relentlessly.
| krrrh wrote:
| It depends a lot on how you define "their". In both those
| cases you could also argue that the president was still
| establishing the supremacy of a democratically elected
| republican government as the process for achieving change
| rather than perpetual revolution. It's different then
| having elected officials undermined by permanent
| bureaucracies.
|
| I'm not defending the sedition act, but it's quite
| important that it was implemented during a quasi-war and
| was still barely passed. There's also a reason that two
| hundred years later it's constantly held up as a paragon
| of bad law and there's no way it would pass judicial
| review at any point since then (it didn't at the time
| either, because it expired 2 years after it was passed
| and before judicial review was established).
| acomar wrote:
| not to mention that we're speaking of colonists who
| intentionally set out to genocide the native population
| on a regular basis. and most were slavers, putting the
| lie to any talk of freedom. in the end, little mattered
| to them in that revolution than removing English fetters
| on themselves. that people identify with a group that
| would almost certainly would have denied them the right
| to legal personhood and look to them as guarantors of
| freedom only speaks to their historical illiteracy.
| enave2 wrote:
| I remember often hearing pundits claim that "17
| intelligence agencies had confirmed Russian meddling in the
| 2016 election"
|
| Now, it turned out that "meddling" amounted to buying
| facebook ads. Not really a huge deal.
|
| But more importantly, since you brought up the founders -
| what would they say about the fact that we apparently have
| at least 17 federal agencies dedicated to spying.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I have a feeling they would want to burn all 17 to the
| ground.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Maybe not.
|
| https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-
| revolution...
|
| > Among other honorifics, George Washington--known as
| Agent 711 in the Culper Spy Ring--is often heralded as a
| great "spymaster," and indeed, he was. Under Washington's
| astute watch, several networks of spies operated in both
| close-knit circles and far-reaching societies.
|
| > Washington recognized the need for an organized
| approach to espionage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_in_the_America
| n_R...
|
| > The original Committee members--America's first foreign
| intelligence agency--were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin
| Harrison, Thomas Johnson and subsequently included James
| Lovell, who became the Congress' expert on codes and
| ciphers and has been called the father of American
| cryptanalysis.
|
| > On June 5, 1776, the Congress appointed John Adams,
| Thomas Jefferson, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson, and
| Robert Livingston "to consider what is proper to be done
| with persons giving intelligence to the enemy or
| supplying them with provisions." They were charged with
| revising the Articles of War in regard to espionage
| directed against the American forces. The problem was an
| urgent one: Dr. Benjamin Church, chief physician of the
| Continental Army, had already been seized and imprisoned
| as a British agent, but there was no civilian espionage
| act, and George Washington thought the existing military
| law did not provide punishment severe enough to afford a
| deterrent.
|
| That's three right from the start.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The context is really key when you consider the information
| that the prominent senator is aware of about the subject
| that you as a random member of the public may not.
|
| If you look at the fate of people like Aaron Burr, I think
| it's quite clear that the founders were not supermen, but
| humans who dealt with similar problems that we do today.
| Likewise, the post-revolution treatment of tories wasn't
| exactly magnanimous either.
| 5faulker wrote:
| US's running some sick show behind the scene...
| beckman466 wrote:
| _" The slide also shows that AT&T retains "cloud storage
| internet/web browsing" data for 1 year. When asked what this
| detail entails exactly, such as websites visited by customers on
| the AT&T network, AT&T spokesperson Margaret Boles said in an
| email that "Like all companies, we are required by law to comply
| with mandatory legal demands, such as warrants based on probable
| cause. Our responses comply with the law." The document also
| mentions that law enforcement can request records related to
| wearable devices from AT&T."_
|
| do you know what this "cloud storage internet/web browsing" data
| looks like?
| badkitty99 wrote:
| beta version of social scoring system?
| aendruk wrote:
| Did they misread the table? I see two distinct rows:
|
| - Cloud Storage
|
| - Internet/Web Browsing
|
| In the big picture it's probably fine to conflate them but the
| technical aspects of each are going to be very different.
| gruez wrote:
| probably dns/sni logs? with most sites using https that's all
| they're really going to get.
| beermonster wrote:
| I wonder what % of https requests are using esni these days..
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| And with VPNs like Apple Private Relay being broadly pushed,
| likely less than that.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Never assume- carriers can mandate data collection or
| sharing.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Is there any way to change dns servers on lte/3G? Odd that
| iPhones let you change it for wifi, but not cellular. Can I
| even find out it's using?
|
| What about android?
| ornornor wrote:
| Nextdns works on both cellular and wifi. They have a
| profile you can download so it's definitely possible but
| maybe not through the GUI.
| ls612 wrote:
| Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 app works with both Wifi and cellular
| by configuring itself as a VPN. I've been happy with it for
| a few years now.
| gruez wrote:
| >Is there any way to change dns servers on lte/3G?
|
| probably doesn't matter because regular dns is performed in
| the clear. There's nothing preventing them from
| logging/intercepting your requests even if you changed
| them.
|
| >Odd that iPhones let you change it for wifi, but not
| cellular.
|
| >What about android?
|
| AFAIK on both changing DNS can be done by using an app that
| acts like a VPN, and intercepts the DNS requests.
| jakobdabo wrote:
| DNSCloak does that, but it sometimes crashes, and
| unfortunately there are no recent updates.
| NmAmDa wrote:
| AdGuard can do that on both android and iphone
| ev1 wrote:
| at the very least, t-mobile has static-routed public
| resolvers like google's to their own in the past.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Though legally speaking, there might be a difference
| between logging dns packets going to ??? and dns packets
| hitting the provider's dns server.
|
| The latter could be construed as necessary logging while
| the former is spying for the sake of spying.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The legal aspect might change what AT&T 'has' to log,
| although they likely voluntarily include other passively-
| obtained port 53 traffic in their cooperation.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Android natively supports DoH, which both lets you change
| the DNS server and prevent your cellular provider from
| redirecting/logging DNS requests:
|
| Network Settings -> Advanced -> Private DNS
|
| Enter one.one.one.one (or substitute your favorite DoH-
| supporting resolver)
| specto wrote:
| Until eSNI or similar is implemented across all sites, it
| doesn't matter much.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I've never understood why they try to "disguise" these things.
| They always stick out like a sore thumb. How would anyone know
| the difference from a normal cell tower?
| miloignis wrote:
| I think you've misunderstood - the disguised towers are normal
| cell towers, and normal cell towers are normally disguised to
| be less of an eyesore.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| MetroPCS looks to be the most private cell provider.
| hammock wrote:
| When it comes to retention periods, AT&T (who I imagine most
| iPhone users here have, by default) is REALLY bad: https://video-
| images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1634930279896-r...*
|
| They also have the longest and deepest history of working with
| the government on surveillance.
| slg wrote:
| >AT&T (who I imagine most iPhone users here have, by default)
|
| AT&T lost iPhone exclusivity a decade ago.
| kkirsche wrote:
| Your point? Most customers in the marketplace are averse to
| change across any service. It's not uncommon for users to
| stay with single providers due to momentum.
| slg wrote:
| My point is that saying iPhone users are by default AT&T
| users rests on the assumption that people have stuck with
| the same decisions they made about mobile network and phone
| operating system that they made over a decade ago. That
| isn't even factoring in the growth of the market overall
| and the people who have bought their first smartphone
| within the last decade.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The churn rate for wireless carriers is around 2% per year
| in the US, give or take. There are about 300M wireless
| subscribers in the US. Meaning that around 6M wireless
| subscribers per year switch carriers.
| _jal wrote:
| > They also have the longest and deepest history of working
| with the government on surveillance.
|
| I've long considered ATT to be an extension of the US
| intelligence apparatus. Ownership doesn't matter, it is who
| they answer to.
| travoc wrote:
| You can download some of the data that Verizon retains from your
| own cellular use here: https://www.verizon.com/support/download-
| and-view-vpd-file/
|
| When I did it, I could see they recorded IP addresses, time
| stamps and data transfer volume of every web site that I visited
| over their network, along with cell tower connections. It was
| fascinating.
| fulafel wrote:
| Wow, that's invasive.
| jamesfe wrote:
| Is it? How do they bill you without knowing how much data you
| transferred? How do they debug what went wrong with your
| connection without logs?
|
| This stuff is barely scratching the surface of the data those
| companies collect and maintain, likely for long periods of
| time, just to analyze and improve customer experience.
| fulafel wrote:
| I interpreted this to mean they log traffic per web site:
|
| > data transfer volume of every web site that I visited
| over their network
| snuser wrote:
| without net neutrality this could be useful for future
| billing arrangements
| unethical_ban wrote:
| As if ATT gets on the line with end-users to debug site-
| specific issues!
|
| Aggregate data usage is one thing, but retaining any kind
| of detailed logs on where one goes or how much data was
| used on a specific site is unnecessary for the base
| provisioning of network connectivity.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Actually it's very transparent. They're required to keep that
| data by law, they're just making it easy for us to see that.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I was curious about this. I knew that logged data has to be
| turned over if there is a warrant. I wasn't sure if logging
| was mandated.
|
| I found this article [0] describing the situation in
| various countries, with the following info for the United
| States:
|
| > Data Retention Period = 1 Year for Internet metadata,
| email, phone records
|
| > Authorization required to access the data = Various
| United States agencies leverage the (voluntary) data
| retention practiced by many U.S. commercial organizations
| like Amazon through programs such as Prism and Muscular.
|
| > Status Of Data Retention Regime = No mandatory data
| retention regime
|
| I'm guessing the above means that metdata (user ip and also
| user web and email destinations) are held for a year, but
| retaining actual user data (email contents, etc) is not
| mandated.
|
| [0] https://www.privacyend.com/mandatory-data-retention/
| murat124 wrote:
| Does anyone know the AT&T equivalent of this URL?
| hpoe wrote:
| Just out of curiosity do you use a VPN, I always browse with a
| VPN on my phone for precisely that reason and am wondering if
| it actually works to help protect my privacy.
| aksss wrote:
| Assuming your VPN isn't owned by or in cahoots with the NSA
| too, you're dns lookups would be shielded from view, I guess.
| travoc wrote:
| Using a VPN would protect the privacy of your IP sessions
| from Verizon, although your VPN provider would now be able to
| see all of your session information.
|
| I suspect a VPN user would show up in the Verizon data file
| with many large TCP sessions to a very small number of IPs.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I am my own VPN provider. EC2 micro instance on AWS running
| StrongSwan. Sure, feds could dig that up, but it would be
| messier. I wonder what in/out logs AWS keeps on its
| VPCs....
| gtsteve wrote:
| t3.micro = $0.0104 x 750 = $7.80/mo without taking your
| bandwidth into consideration.
|
| Lightsail costs $3.50/mo with 1tb transfer bundled or
| $5/mo with 2tb.
|
| If your setup is scripted then it probably makes sense to
| switch over to save a bit of cash. Others following the
| same path could save some money by using Lightsail as
| opposed to EC2.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Yeah, but I wanted full control...
| zzyzxd wrote:
| > EC2 micro instance on AWS running StrongSwan
|
| Just curious, how many captchas do you solve with this
| setup daily? Or even IP bans?
|
| I did exactly the same thing once and it was so annoying.
| beermonster wrote:
| You can always use Privacy Pass as quite often you're
| dealing with CloudFlare protected sites.
|
| That said, if you're using your own EC2/lightsail
| instance you won't see as many CAPTCHAs as, say, using a
| commodity VPN service.
|
| Given you can't detect a VPN per-se (if configured
| properly) usually the way it works is that the
| destination node knows you're coming from a source IP
| from a known VPN-supplier's well-known IP-block.
|
| If you go for this kind of setup (running your own VPN on
| AWS) you're simply changing your ISP to Amazon. They
| still might (and probably will) be monitoring egress
| traffic at the very least to perform any kind of incident
| analysis.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| None? I've had this for a long time with no issues.
| That's weird. I'm on it now listening to spotify, reading
| WaPo and browsing HN. What sites complain? I'll try it?
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Why pay AWS $0.09 a GB tax to listen to Spotify?
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Yes. Spotify. Ahem. That's why I use my VPN... cough
| cough.
| gzer0 wrote:
| I suspect that the effort required to succesfully produce
| viable evidence from a VPN provider such as Mullvad are
| significantly higher than the effort we see here from ATT,
| T-mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.
| travoc wrote:
| That is probably true in most cases. Choose your poison.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Wouldn't that kind of data be massive? Any idea on what kind of
| infrastructure they use?
| adolph wrote:
| Prolly just "borrow" NSAs.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| Prolly just being indirectly paid by NSA to run it
| themselves.
| fouc wrote:
| 120 million verizon customers * 100 daily entries (on
| average) of "ip address, website, total_data, time_stamp,
| cell_tower_connections"
|
| 4.4 trillion database entries in a year
| danuker wrote:
| I guess that is part of why Internet is so expensive in the
| US.
| mldonahue wrote:
| For anyone who wants to know more about how companies can more
| ethically, and transparently, engage with law
| enforcement/governments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28156465
|
| Establishing a best practice for public/private sector
| communication keeps the govt in check and helps companies ensure
| compliance & transparency.
| einpoklum wrote:
| That's neither ethical nor transparent. And the guy writing
| that post is ex-FBI.
|
| An ethical and transparent way to handle such subpoenas would
| include:
|
| 1. If possible, not being a US company so you might be able to
| avoid the subpoena in the first place.
|
| 2. Have a policy of not keeping user data at all, or keeping it
| with a third party that is not legally bound by US government
| subpoenas, so that it can't (?) be subpoenaed.
|
| 3. Publish any subpoena you get from the government.
|
| 4. Moreover, arrange it so that subpoenas are published before
| being read, so that if you get a National Security Letter, you
| would not be able to comply with the non-disclosure
| requirement. Another way to go about this may be to only open
| subpoenas in a public forum, preferably with journalists
| present. Try to consult ACLU/EFF lawyers about this particular
| issue.
|
| 5. If the government somehow gets its hands on user data,
| inform the users immediately.
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