Joe Dog Software

“He’s digging his own grave with a very large spade.”

— Kevin Egan, an extradition attorney, on the revelation that Edward Snowden divulged NSA hacking activity inside China.

Last week the Guardian broke the news about Prism, an NSA data mining project in which the security agency harvests transaction records with the cooperation of private telecoms and internet companies. While it’s illegal to eavesdrop without a warrant, the NSA is harvesting conversational meta-data: calling records, email transactions and credit card swipes. This is basically the stuff you’d find in server logs.

The news was greeted with simultaneous outrage and indifference. Some were tremendously bothered by the news while others shrugged and said “meh.” Your Joe Dog’s congressman emailed to say he was greatly bothered by the news. Really? Then why didn’t you email constituents after any one of the thirteen briefings you had on the subject?

Five years ago, the NSA was probably incapable of doing much with all the data it collected. Just managing its information would have been a full time job. Since it began its surveillance programs, the NSA has brought up a series of large data centers to warehouse its records. The biggest, its Death Star, was constructed at Camp Williams, Utah.

The agency also improved its ability to effectively use this information. As the New York Times reports, NSA is working with Silicon Valley big data experts to efficiently sift through its transaction records. Its algorithms search for patterns and alert human agents when they match the hallmarks of terrorist activity.

And this is where it gets eerie.

From a study published in Nature, we learn that just four points of phone data are necessary to pinpoint the caller’s location with 95% accuracy. The average person leaves many breadcrumbs that reveal his whereabouts: cell phone data, EZ-Pass transactions, credit card purchases, ATM transactions, etc. Using information from cell towers, the agency can pinpoint your altitude right to the floor you’re sitting on at this moment. (I’ll save you some trouble: I’m currently on the third).

If you’d prefer to keep your location a secret, then, yes, this program is a concern. Unfortunately, it appears to be perfectly legal. You can have modern conveniences like cell phones, EZ-Pass, credit and debit cards or privacy. Pick one.

The New York Times reports that a large percentage of Chinese cyber attacks on American targets originate from inside a same small neighborhood that features a Chinese army headquarters building. The headquarters, a large white office tower in Shanghai, is surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer. It is the only structure in the neighborhood capable of housing a large number of sophisticated cyber attackers. This all but confirms the Chinese army is behind the American attacks.

The hackers, known in the US as the Comment Crew, were traced to Shanghai by Mandiant, a US security firm hired by the NY Times. The New York paper hired Mandiant to end infiltration of its network last year. The Virginia firm traced that attack and hundreds like it to the Shanghai neighborhood that houses the base, known as P.L.A. Unit 61398.

The firm were not able to confirm the attacks originated inside the building but the probability is very high.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Sure, it’s possible that an enterprise scale hacking effort led by mainland Chinese with direct access to Shanghai telecom infrastructure has setup shop inside one of the restaurants by Unit 61398. Now that they’ve been exposed we’ll just wait for the Chinese government to shut them down. That should happen any minute now. Yep … any … minute … now. Who are we kidding? The Chinese are attacking us!!