FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network 362
An anonymous reader writes "Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has constructed a 'point-and-click surveillance system' that creates instant wiretaps on almost any communications device. A thousand pages of restricted documents released under the Freedom of Information Act were required to determine the veracity of this clandestine project, Wired News reports. Called the Digital Collection System Network, it connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure. From the article: 'FBI wiretapping rooms in field offices and undercover locations around the country are connected through a private, encrypted backbone that is separated from the internet. Sprint runs it on the government's behalf. The network allows an FBI agent in New York, for example, to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California, and immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. With a few keystrokes, the agent can route the recordings to language specialists for translation.'"
Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Insightful)
exactly right. Frankly, i just don't think our gov. has it together enough to pull of something of this magnitude secretly. All the different people, organizations, and physical locations that would have to be in on the project just makes it unreasonable to expect the whole thing to stay under wraps. If this system exists at all then props to them for a pretty impressive piece of software/hardware (even if it lends itself to being used illegally).
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Insightful)
Those that use the service don't even need to see the big picture, only told they can point here and click there for their wiretapping goodness...
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Insightful)
All evidence to the contrary. Either the story is fake or it's not secret.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Funny)
Why yes, he does. But you don't want to know what's in it.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, actually, that's not true. Sprint has pretty good technology, but plain suck at billing. But triple-billing the government isn't such a big problem.
Audit findings (Score:5, Insightful)
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but there is another program run by another TLA agency.
It's a really slick program. You have one guess as to the agency.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey mods: how, exactly, is this comment "insightful?" All it does is parrot standard /. groupthink ("Everything the government ever does sucks and doesn't work") without taking into consideration the fact that one of the highest-paying users of contract labor just might be able to afford top-notch engineers when they really care about results.
I mean, it's not surprising that they keep fucking up some things, [disasterhelp.gov] but surveillance of American citizens? Sadly, that's something I trust my government to do quite well.
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Hey mods: how, exactly, is this comment "insightful?" All it does is parrot standard /. groupthink ("Everything the government ever does sucks and doesn't work") without taking into consideration the fact that one of the highest-paying users of contract labor just might be able to afford top-notch engineers when they really care about results.
Everything the Government does does suck and fail to work. And the FBI has a history of sucking out at tech projects; Google around for the Virtual Case File system. $170 million essentially piled high and lit aflame.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not quite sure I'd be as strong as to say "everything", but I'll take advance issue when someone comes along and says the private sector can do it better. I've spent enough time working in big business to know that the government has no monopoly on ineptness and stupidity.
Quite simply:
In government, the punishment for ineptness and stupidity is supposed to be replacement by the ballot.
In the private sector, the punishment for ineptness and stupidity is supposed to be replacement by a competitor.
IMHO, we have a situation now where *both* remedy methods are impaired. In essence, the root cause of both failures really come down to monopolies or duopolies. In the former case, the duopoly is a 2-party system restricts our ability to select a real replacement. In the latter case rampant consolidation has restricted our choices, so there's little selection available. In both cases, parties are acting to restrict the information necessary to make an informed decision.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? [wikipedia.org]
Really? [wikipedia.org]
Really? [wikipedia.org]
Squawk!
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are more than 40 years old.
Yes because (Score:5, Insightful)
Including:
12.4% increase for Medicare and a 7.0% increase for Medicare.
The problem isn't Republicans and their evil budget cutting ways, the problem is rampant and out of control entitlement spending, which both Democrats and Republicans contribute to and neither is willing to control.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny! Even with the Bush tax cuts (actually, because of...) the US Gov't has received record tax receipts not just for any time in US history, but WORLD history, and we're still running a deficit! It appears to me that the conservative movement is over funding government.
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Hey, I know what you mean, having been on the receiving end of some government IT projects [dfas.mil] before. Still, I bet a lot of these problems are minimized when the government is paying for something it really wants (as opposed to something mandated by Congress or military-industria
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Agent Smith
"Okay, Abdul must be on this one"
Smith clicks mouse.
"..can't believe Sheila had the nerve to.."
Agent Smith
"Okay, Abdul must be on *this* one"
"..then my man Mafu, he gave dat bioch wat for.."
Agent Jones ROLLS EYES.
Re:Sounds a bit too smooth (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the government - and the FBI. Somehow I can't believe it actually works as smoothly as that.
If libertarianism leads to slavery, the road runs through the state of denial.
As the last two free Americans are being herded onto the train for the concentration camp, the Republican will turn to the Democrat and say "don't worry, we'll be fine. Public transportation never works."
Hollywood? (Score:5, Funny)
And it actually works? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, we did manage to elect a party for six years, campaigning on the premise that the government is too incompetent to do anything, so they have good reason to believe the propaganda works.
P. J. O'Rourke:
Not linked to my communications system (Score:2)
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- the delusional (something like this wouldn't happen in the USA
- the flamebaiter
- the spook astroturfer
these are declassified gov't docs TFA is talking about. what's not to be believed?
hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Only if they convince the military to go along with it. If the military, or enough of it, says what the government is doing is wrong... But the military has been ordered to do, and done, a lot of things [reason.com] I wouldn't have done when I was in.
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Hasn't been that [wikipedia.org] difficult [wikipedia.org] before, and I can't see why it would be now.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm not arguing that. If there was a widespread insurrection of handgun enthusiasts against the government, it would be a bloody stalemate, not a victory for the government or the revolutionaries.
It's one thing to assert that an armed populace can foil a government's operations away from its centers of power, but it's quite a step to assert that said populace can actually st
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The KGB and Stasi. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really funny is I distinctively remember Reagan boasting to the world how open our society was, how our citizens could move about freely without presenting papers and didn't have to worry about their conversations being recorded by the state and used against them.
Oh well, it's for our security so it must be good! After all, if you have nothing to fear, then this won't affect you. If you complain, the terrorists win. We can't have that, can we?
Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not USSR yet, but we seem to be trending in that direction.
If we give up all our freedoms, will the terrorists stop hating us?
Re:Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as any restrictions on political speech? Not that I have seen. I am not fond of the patriot act but your rant is a little over the top.
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(bold emphasis is mine)
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I love people that just rant on.
I said that I didn't like the patriot act and that it should still require a warrant.
Wire tapping without a warrant is a problem. This wiretap network isn't a problem.
Re:Exactly! (Score:5, Informative)
The FBI has also been abusing our rights since day one. They have been doing many illegal things in the name of "suppressing communist activity". Just check out operation COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org]
from the linked article -- these are the methods the FBI used to suppress domestic political activity:
As far as any restrictions on political speech? Not that I have seen. I am not fond of the patriot act but your rant is a little over the top.
That's because you have only been listening to the corporate media. If you actually do the research on the published activities of the FBI (and CIA as well) you will be shocked.
Here's what an official congressional committee that was tasked to study domestic intelligence activities said in 1976:
You haven't "seen" any of this stuff because our corporate media gets huge amounts of money in tax breaks and other forms of special treatment from the government, so the media is not wanting to upset the government in any way, shape or form. You w
Re:Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
So in your mind there is some catch-22 that if you can speak about government repression that proves that there is none?
And Do you really think that the FBI would just decide one day to tell everyone the illegal things that they were doing?
from the Wikipedia article on COINTELPRO
No one would have known about all of this if it wasn't for the burglary, which got enough documents out there that enraged the pubilc, and so that lawsuits could get more information. We still don't know the whole picture, except that it was really bad.
You can say what you want in the US, China, Russia, or anywhere else in the world. No one is holding their hands over your mouth so that you cannot speak -- that's impossible, and if that's your standard, it is ridiculous. Repression of free speech happens when the government takes action against you for speaking freely, and tries to stop you from doing so. That was abundantly proven by the church committee when they investigated the illegal acts of the FBI.
When the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into stopping his civil rights work, how was that not limiting his free speech rights? When the government uses your tax dollars to stop your free speech from getting on TV [washingtonpost.com], how is that not limiting your free speech rights? There are a ton more examples, it's not limited to those cases in case you are inclined to quibble. FBI repression was proven in court to extend to vandalims and violence, including murder.
Propaganda (Score:3)
As far as any restrictions on political speech? Not that I have seen.
Free Speech Zones. [wikipedia.org]
In the US they must have a court order to do it.
Warrentless Wiretapping [wikipedia.org]
This network shouldn't be a shock or frankly all that scary as long as they still require a court order to do it.
But they don't need a court order, and you know it, yet nowhere do you say that. Why don't you mention that fact? I mean, criminal psychopaths wouldn't be all that scary if they needed a court order to kill you. It sounds like you are trying to write a propaganda piece, carefully worded so that you can claim you weren't really saying what you're actually saying. People will read what you wrote and many of them will come away with a mistaken impression about wh
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If you're talking about foreign Islamic fundamentalists, then no.
Their main problem is decades of USA foreign policy.
If you're talking about domestic Christian fundamentalists, then yes.
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My livelihood is based off of making it easier for the government (specifically the military) to get information. There should be no doubt that the government could develop such a system because the govenment doesn't really develop it. They contract it out to companies that have the expertise, in this case Sprint.
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From TFA:
So it seems wiretaps can't be initiated at will by the FBI; someone at the telcom has to enable access.
Wrong. Clinton/dems actually did this. (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps Reagan could make that bost with a straight
Brilliant! (Score:3, Interesting)
Oversight (Score:3, Insightful)
The checks and balances are being removed, one by one, and *that* is the scary part.
As for the P2P, there's a huge difference between the citizens of a nation, and the government of a nation. Also, I wouldn't mind of the government violated copyright, so why should I care if
Onymously. (Score:3, Insightful)
They know that they don't have to post onymously for the watchers to know who they are, (and thus can remain eligible for a free arm band), while still avoiding negative mod points.
-FL
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Where did I say that? I stated that abuse and imperfections are a given with the current politico-economic order.
I love how AC's set an impossibly low standard of reading comprehension just so they can try to feel better about themselves by ranting at strawmen.
No, you d
And just when is the warrant issued? (Score:5, Funny)
You realize, of course, the majority of the time this facility will be used to obtain free service from phone sex lines...
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Still do, at least according to TFA:
Good? (Score:2)
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Poor man's Echelon (Score:5, Interesting)
My take is this: Privacy is dead. The only way to keep the playing field level is to make sure everyone has access...
Privacy is dead? (Score:3, Informative)
I guess the main problem is getting everybody to use it.
This being slashdot I guess I should mention a certain monopolist who stands in the way of mass adoption of pretty much anything.
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When you've managed to capture your whole neighborhood's phone traffic and can pick keywords out of fifty or a hundred people's phone traffic, (which NaturallySpeaking won't do without training) call me.
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Sure, I can do that... That is, if I don't mind the risk of a felony conviction. (FBI types don't have that issue, obviously...) I bet you could do it with a single PC as well.
The point was not how to build a large scale system. The point was that building a large scale system is fairly easy to d
Privacy is Dead (Score:2)
Privacy is dead. The only way to keep the playing field level is to make sure everyone has access.
This is exactly the point made by a book by David Brin: The Transparent Society [davidbrin.com]. As bugging gets cheaper and easier, maintaining current standards of privacy is going to become increasingly unrealistic. What we really should be doing, he argues, is enabling people to "spy" on their supposedly publicly accountable government.
Corollary (Score:2)
Self replies are lame, I know - but there's an important corollary to this trend: If fighting for privacy is doomed to be a losing battle, then you should instead be fighting for a society in which you have an unchallenged right to whatever political thought or harmless-but-embarrassing habit you think you need privacy for.
In short - a culture in which people who have done nothing wrong really don't have anything to hide.
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Your take is wrong. Just because privacy is hard doesn't mean it's dead. If you're going to fight "to keep the playing field level" then it is better to fight FOR privacy, not against it. The government will always have more eyes and ears, more computing power, and more political power than private citizens, so even if everyone has access to everything the government still "wins" and you sti
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Privacy is dead... For Joe Sixpack. Bruce finally got that somewhere between Applied Cryptology and Secrets and Lies. The Powers-That-Be will never allow common privacy measures for the masses. On the political side, they just trumpet terr'sts and baby-rapers, and the great majority will hand them the keys (sometimes literally).
Does that mean you can't keep your secrets? Not at all! You know how. Just don't come up on the
So uhhh.... (Score:2)
It's not unknown anymore! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's safe to say most everyone knows about it now. As long as a warrant is required to set up the bugging, I don't have a big problem with it.
I just can't shake the nagging suspicion they've gotten a little slack on the warrant thing lately. Bugging someone's phone without a warrant is spying. Spying on Americans, regardless of the perceived justification, is not protecting the public, it's undermining everything this country stands for.
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What is new is all the technical information and the advanced state the software is in.
Warrant? (Score:3, Interesting)
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A little mixed (Score:2)
On the other hand, the US government has recently been a little cavalier about my rights, and there are historical periods where they've been a fair bit wor
Who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Aiieee, my tax $$$! (Score:3, Insightful)
So you want to vote for who? (Score:2, Informative)
T"he law that makes the FBI's surveillance network possible had its genesis in the Clinton administration."
Another reason why a pass on Hillary might be a good idea.
Time to move (Score:3)
That's right you sheep, just stand there and take it.
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You first.
Post when you do.
These
Wake me when some of you actually DO bug out and become expats because your feelings were sufficiently hurt by goverment actions that don't affect you. Be brave and lead by example. Given the many overseas employment opportunities it's not that difficult, and my expat buddies make good bank.
As society becomes more Balkanized and the US population grows, effective surveillance options will be required to protect against intern
Kinda answers a few questions. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Wake me when some of you actually DO bug out and become expats because your feelings were sufficiently hurt by goverment actions that don't affect you. Be brave and lead by example. Given the many overseas employment opportunities it's not that difficult, and my expat buddies make good bank.
Kinda throws a light on what the Jews went through in Germany. One of the difficult questions old surviving Jewish grannies and grandads are asked is, "Why didn't you do something? You should have known!" --Well they
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Baaaa. Baaaaa.
Just stand in the corner and the powers that be be over to sheer you later.
The more things change (Score:3, Funny)
Wadsworth: I don't know! He's on everybody else's. Why shouldn't he be on mine?
"Route the recordings to language specialists..." (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm sorry. All of our Arabic language specialists are busy assisting other agents. Your call is important to the nation, so please do not hang up. Stay on the line and you will be assisted by the next available language specialist. The estimated waiting time for this call is six months and twenty-seven minutes"
followed by an overcompressed
Where's OSAMA? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more important to Bush to spy on Americans than to catch Osama, because catching Osama might mean the "temporary suspension" of American rights (including Habeas Corpus [wikipedia.org], when Bush says so) could end, leaving Bush with less power.
Now let's watch the trollMods try to suppress me for telling the simple truth.
WHERE'S OSAMA?
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I little inflamatory and perhaps over the edge just a tiny bit, but your point is well taken. Personally, I don't think Bush is that power-mad or corrupt. I think he's just stupid. I think it's the people behind Bush who don't want to lose power. Of course, by this point, Bush probably wants to hold onto that power as well, but only because other people have told him it's necessary to do so in order to "keep the nation safe."
Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
You are so wrong. (Score:3, Funny)
judicial review (Score:2)
I hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
and the warrant under which such actions were taken
Sheesh (Score:5, Funny)
"The government is too big and wasteful. There's so much paperwork and useless red tape and hoops to jump through to do one simple little thing. There's so much money just thrown away! I wish they'd fix that."
"This new system is slick and efficient. It scares me. I wish they had lots of red tape, paperwork, and hoops. That would slow them down and protect my liberties."
Let's hear the "tinfoil hats" catcalls now... (Score:5, Insightful)
YOU'RE WRONG. They are using cellphones as tracking devices and bugs, they ARE capable of listening to your phones and watching your surfing and building databases of everything you are and do. They will build profiles and scoop up people they don't like. They can and are using their new powers to punish the opponents of their new powers. And we're just getting warmed up.
As for the "so what?" crowd: if a tool for oppression is built, it will be used. It HAS been used. Innocent people are going to never-never land. Torture (solitary is torture, first, and the rest is just gravy) is now accepted and lauded. Thousands of verified innocents have been kidnapped, tens of thousands of people can't fly, and now they are sealing the borders. "Conspiracy" my ass, they are doing it out in the sunshine. Cheney just had federal arrest warrants issued for some college students that mooned him last April. I don't believe that that is a crime warranting federal involvement, but apparently we have a king now, and he makes up whatever law he likes. How did they find those kids? Supersekrit police state tech.
Children, if it can be done, it will be done, IF you don't grow some backbones and insist that they don't do it. They take your massive silence as assent. Put down the game controllers and pay attention before they castrate you all.
What should we do? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, for the bygone days of yore: Watergate (Score:4, Interesting)
The five gentlemen who were busted after an alert security guard noticed several locks tape down were installing wiretaps [wikipedia.org] in the Democratic National Commitee's headquarters during the '72 presidential election.
How low-tech! They actually had to go attach wires to physical telephones!
Now, I'm not saying that this newfangled system would really be used to affect the outcome of the '98 election, but if it were done, it would be undetectable. No amount of alert security guards would catch the perpetrators.
I'm old enough to have lived through Watergate; the whole nation was in crisis.
This level of tech not in mainstream industry?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't we have this kind of inter-protocol communication in the public sector? I'm not talking about tapping peoples' conversations. I'm talking about interconnectivity of our own communication devices. You know, my cell phone can synchronize calendar dates and contacts with my computer at home. My iPod will also load that same data. The thing is, I have to manually type these items into my Calendar program or my Address Book software for the data to be there. Well, I also use Facebook a lot and am regularly viewing Events on there. Why are we still stuck in the stone age, where I can't take this "Event" and just load it into my Calendar and thus have that all synced up? And, maybe some details on that facebook Event changes, and it just automatically syncs that up to my Calendar software and thus my cell phone and iPod?
Whatever, don't know why I'm wasting my time typing about it, but I'm just tired of the slowness of functionality advancements in the tech industry. We have all this new tech, and we're not even scratching the surface of advanced communications that we're fully capable of implementing.
The secresy (Score:3, Insightful)
It should not be necessary in a democratic society to have that much secrecy - it should be an exception rather than the main principle for what the government does. In this case - what is the point of secrecy? It wouldn't hamper the FBI's work one bit that people were told from the start that this is going on, it is simply because it has become a habit to keep the people in the dark. This is a very serious trend that endangers our democracy - democracy can't work if people don't know what is going on.
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Said the spider to the fly (Score:5, Funny)
Of course you don't, Anonymous Coward.
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Unknowingly.
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And some of you trust the government a little too much... as in it makes you blind.
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It's kind of sad that "Nerds" would be scared of a simple technology upgrade.
Not really at all afraid. "Nurds" already know not to trust the ISP, that is why ssh, VPN, PGP, IPSec etc when they are communicating with others. I use these all the time for remote working.
But sometimes do it plain text (/.), you know a Fed will look at this message if I mention Bin Laden. Presuming they are really looking for him.
I am beginning to wonder if government fears it's own people.