AT&T Accidentally Leaks NSA Suit Information 274
op12 writes "CNET has an article describing how AT&T accidentally leaked sensitive information involving the NSA lawsuit. From the article: 'AT&T's attorneys this week filed a 25-page legal brief striped with thick black lines that were intended to obscure portions of three pages and render them unreadable. But the obscured text nevertheless can be copied and pasted inside some PDF readers, including Preview under Apple's OS X and the xpdf utility used with X11. The deleted portions of the legal brief seek to offer benign reasons why AT&T would allegedly have a secret room at its downtown San Francisco switching center that would be designed to monitor Internet and telephone traffic. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class action lawsuit in January, alleges that room is used by an unlawful National Security Agency surveillance program.""
DMCA anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like Slashdot is informing readers how to avoid document protection mechanisms. I hope you don't get sued under the DMCA!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:DMCA anyone? (Score:2)
Re:DMCA anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:DMCA anyone? (Score:2)
Re:DMCA anyone? (Score:2)
Plausible bullshit. (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall a redacted PDF from italy that 'supported' the US gov'ts claims at the time..
it's too damn convenient, if the redacted portion had been damming.. I'm sure the doc would have been on paper, with the blocked portions cut out... not blacked over with a sharpie.
Oh crap (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh crap (Score:2)
Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but with this administration, it's hard not to assume some underhanded strong-armin^^^^^ persuasion.
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyhow, here's an unredacted excerpt:
In January 2003, I, along with others, toured the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco -- actually three floors of an SBC building. There I saw a new room being built adjacent to the 4ESS switch room where the public's phone calls are routed. I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room. The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room.
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2)
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2)
We found him; his name's Bob Novak.
So what you have is FUD being pushed at this point. First they're stating the terrorists are using and I quote "UNBREAKABLE CRYPTO". Well golly gee Wilbur, if they're using unbreakable crypto then why bother tapping them. Give me a break.
Cryptography is only unbreakable if the key is at least the length of the message and us
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:5, Informative)
128-bit encryption: 0.25 sextillion years. That's barebones SSL. PGP with a 4096 bit key? Right...
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2)
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2)
I disagree - if the government finds out someone is a "terrorist" (which I think is a loaded term in this day and age, so I use quotes), they could use some pretty sophisticated machine learning algorithms to find what networks he's in if they have access to his phone records. People tend to clump in certain social networks, and phones calls are a decent way of deter
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you think White House calls are on record (Score:2)
Additionally he is infinitely more likely to make contact with enemies of the state than the average person.
Do you really think that White House calls are in the record?
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:4, Informative)
This is exactly what the NSA is using the records for. No one is sitting there recording 2 billion phone calls a day. They're building a large call graph and using it as an investigative aid.
http://www.cogitoinc.com/articles/gsn.htm [cogitoinc.com]
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2)
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me like there is already too much fragmentation going on. They need to be able to pass info to the people that can make a differ
Re:Here's why _you_ should dismiss the case... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's an interesting* assertion that I see no proof of in the linked article. And of course, it rests what feeble attempts at proof on (a) complete guesswork and (b) the assumption that phonetapping is the only factor in identifying terrists. That entire article is a complete nonsequiter.
*by 'interesting' I mean 'stupid'
It's not this admin, liberal JFK spied on ML King (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me, *this* administration. You lost quite a bit of credibility on t
Re:It's not this admin, liberal JFK spied on ML K (Score:2)
Re:It's not this admin, liberal JFK spied on ML Ki (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, *Kennedy*. You lost quite a bit of credibility on that one. Read up on FISA and specifically what year it was enacted.
Re:It's not this admin, liberal JFK spied on ML Ki (Score:2, Interesting)
NOW, since 1978, due to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act http [fas.org]
room 101 (Score:2, Funny)
Duh.
Re:room 101 (Score:2, Funny)
Proactive protection... (Score:5, Insightful)
benign reasons why AT&T would allegedly have a secret room at its downtown San Francisco switching center
then why did...
the Bush administration [submit] a 29-page brief that elaborates on its argument that the case should be tossed out of court because of the "state secrets" privilege?
Seems like if they didn't do anything illegal they have nothing to fear.
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
It may not have to do with anything specifically in this case, but it may be more of a general "the government can do what it wants because we're at war so you shouldn't be looking at anything that involves a government agency on the front-lines of the war against terror" type of thing.
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
Why hide an argument that something is benign unless you don't want people to have a chance to refute it?
That's like claiming state security before secretly claiming you had nothing to do with something.
If you had nothing to do with it, you should be able to say that publically.
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
Well, when it comes to national security, that's not entirely true.
It's sort of like the old nuclear weapons on ships thing. "We will neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons on board this vessel." If they didn't have any, why not just say so? Because, we want to keep our enemies guessing.
I'm not saying it's a good reason...
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
Well, yes, but in reality it's because if one could find out which ships didn't have nuclear arms, one then immediately knows which ships do...
The funny thing about the government's actions in this case is that it seems that they are essentially admitting to breaking
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
Likely true. But that still doesn't mean that you are either entitled to know what they were up to, or that you will find out.
Re:Proactive protection... (Score:2)
hidden backroom? (Score:2)
They went to see some fat guy who traced the calls for feds from there.
What's amazing is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's amazing is (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's amazing is (Score:2)
Well, as others have pointed out, there may be some mitigating factors here, such as people more concerned about privacy being more unwilling to participate in these polls.
"Look at T's stock price. Huh, normally a company with such an incriminating lawsuit wielded against it would take at least somewhat of a hit in price (though the markets ARE very wierd right now)."
On the other hand, a company that makes $$$ from the NSA to do the agency's di
Re:What's amazing is (Score:2)
Re:What's amazing is (Score:5, Insightful)
We geeks deal with data every day. We understand that patterns can be drawn from it, often very incorrect patterns based off of incomplete data.
The non-geeks cannot comprehend that in the next very few short years, they will get a knock on the door, and the police will say, On Thursday, at 8am, you shopped at the grocery store on 10th street, bought a bunch of bannana's and some milk. 20 minutes later, you were seen driving buy at 3MPH over the speed-limit on this street, which is only 5 minutes from the grocery store. You had better account for exactly what you did during that 15 minutes, because we are placing you under arrest for a crime that was commited in that area at that time. We also see that you have called your nephew 3 times in the last month, who was served 6 months (several years ago) in jail for an assault. And you give money to the ACLU, which makes our job harder.
Re:What's amazing is (Score:2)
Re:What's amazing is (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government must think that Americans are lazy, brainless sheep who will shut out even the most obvious evidence that criminals are running the country. I mean seriously, only the most idiotic... Oh look! American Idol is on!
Re:What's amazing is (Score:5, Interesting)
US pop show victor attracts more votes than any president [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:What's amazing is (Score:2)
Bullshit statistic (Score:3, Interesting)
When will they learn? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's not people who don't really understand how postscript works, it's people who don't realise those 4MB word files contain more than just the visible part of the document....
Re:When will they learn? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever think that somebody was "stupid" on purpose in order to leak the information without going to jail? After all, assuming that they haven't had training in computer security and the specific software in question (after all, who is actually trained to create PDFs?), a prosecutor have a hard time proving that they should have known better.
Re:When will they learn? (Score:2)
Dumb and dumber.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, do these people not employ any security experts that tell them how to do this right? Making clean (text) documents is really easy: Export to ASCII, remove text, import as ASCII. But obviously this low-tech approach needs a qualified high wizard of computing today.
Not that I mind that these amoral scum got bitten.
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest problem is that it's a paradigm shift for these people and they're not ready for it. The "Black Bars" always worked with regular documents, but when they were forced (against their will) to switch to electronic documents many people tried to find ways to make all of their old procedures work with the new format. This always happens when you force people to switch to technologies they're not comfortable with, and throughout history has been an enormous source of lost productivity and security leaks. The kind of people who are making these mistakes aren't the kind of people who read Slashdot, they're the ones that are thankful when they can finally go home every night and get away from those godforsaken computers for the rest of the day.
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
I completely agree. What really anoys me is that these people think they understand what their machine does. They do not. They need expert advice. The experts need to be competent and payed well. If that is too expensive, stay the hell with non-computerized technology!
Also why has everyting to be typeset? What is wrong with ASCII?
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Also, FWIW, the story is incorrect -- one can copy-paste the text using Windows Adobe Reader 7.
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Since PDF is basically Postscript, when something adds bars to the PDF, couldn't any thus-obscured text glyphs be simply removed from the document? This shouldn't be rocket science.
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:5, Insightful)
But did they? I mean, if I wanted to sow disinformation, hiding something with the intent it might be found is a great way to it.
(/me double checks tinfoil hat... and peeks outside for black helicopters)
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Well, if somebody knowledgeable does this, it works. I have reviewed postscript papers that where anonymized by the authors. Unfortunately they forgot that some PS generation processes list the user name at the beginning of the file....
Also the my original comment about ASCII-Expoert and re-imp
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
Re:Dumb and dumber.... (Score:2)
The few times I did this for one of my own papers, I looked at the PostScript file with a text editor (the header and footer are really the only critical place in dvips generated PostScript) and additionally did a ''grep'' for my name. Worked well, but is definitely experts-only,
Pedantic (Score:2)
You're method will not work in the general case.
Specifically, your algorithm performs poorly if you want to remove all occurences of the phrase 'XXX' in a document.
Re:Pedantic (Score:2)
Part of the politcal defense strategy? (Score:3, Funny)
FTA:
Maybe AT&T is trying to show that they're not just a sock puppet of the NSA. Or maybe the NSA is sneaky enough to try and hide that AT&T is merely a sock puppet.
Damn, I'm snickering so hard that I can't find my tinfoil....
Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:5, Insightful)
Suing AT&T really misses the point...
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:2)
-nB
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it tells companies that the government isn't the only one they should fear.
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:2)
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:2)
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:2)
Sovereign Immunity (Score:2)
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:5, Interesting)
So they are suing the people that broke the law.
Plus, of course, sovereign immunity makes it difficult to sue the government unless it voluntarily decides to let you.
Same reason RIAA sues kids (Score:2)
Same reason RIAA sues kids, you sue the involved party with the fewer resources to defend themselves, hope for precedent to further future suits, etc. Of course when the weaker party is AT&T "fewer resources" is obviously relative.
Re:Why are they suing AT&T? (Score:5, Insightful)
Under settled principles of sovereign immunity, the United States, as sovereign, is immune from suit, save as it consents to be sued. United States v. Dalm, 494 U.S. 596, 608 (1990) [findlaw.com] (internal quotes omitted). A necessary corollary of this rule is that when Congress attaches conditions to legislation waiving the sovereign immunity of the United States, those conditions must be strictly observed, and exceptions thereto are not to be lightly implied. Block v. North Dakota, 461 U.S. 273, 287 (1983) [findlaw.com].
Point me to a statute that explicitly recognizes the right of a private citizen to bring suit against the NSA for this kind of thing, and then we'll continue the discussion. (The Fourth Amendment [cornell.edu] might be used, in conjunction with Article III section 2 [cornell.edu] and 28 U.S.C. 1331 [cornell.edu] or 28 U.S.C. 1346 [cornell.edu](a)(2), but there's a tricky issue of standing to be resolved. Without at least some evidence of the NSA spying on the plaintiff individually, there's no way to support a claim of actual injury, and the case will be dismissed on a Rule 12(b)(6) [cornell.edu] motion.)
This "leak" is intentional. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This "leak" is intentional. (Score:4, Insightful)
You see? (Score:4, Funny)
Amazingly Sloppy (Score:5, Informative)
I've received redacted government docs before... (Score:2)
Some people are simply idiots, sloppy, or rushed.
Re:Amazingly Sloppy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Amazingly Sloppy (Score:2)
Hmmm... could this be taken the other way? Their sloppiness/ineptitude being "proof" (or at least consistent with) the belief that they have no connection to the NSA?
Re:Amazingly Sloppy (Score:2)
I think that's to indicate that the document you're viewing is not classified, but came from a source that was Top Secret originally. If it still said "Top Secret" on the top of every page, it might be confused for a classified document.
Remember when Patriots died for Freedom? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, the NSA has never been that legal, from a constitutional view, but noone is willing to challenge their existance, most likely due to fear or threat of tag teams of government lawsuits, IRS audits, and other tricks used by those who wish America to live in Fear.
NSA itself isn't really the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problems come in when required legal processes are ignored by the powers that be.
I feel ashamed to have worked under that agency for a couple of years. What is going on here is against the very mantra they preach to you regarding the performance of your duties. Violating the laws against collection on US Citizens used to be about on the same level as screwing a horse. Now it seems to be quite acceptable, at least by the upper echelon of management.
Heavy Underlining (Score:2, Funny)
100 bucks says (Score:2)
so uh... (Score:2)
Stupid EFF (Score:2, Insightful)
What the lawyers hid from you (Score:5, Informative)
Actual Contents of Secret Room (Score:4, Insightful)
Recent events starting to make sense (Score:2)
At first, I believed it was all only the "pro-big-business" leanings of the current administration. Now I'm beginning to believe it's quite a bit more. Conside
Don't need anything special. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also works with the normal Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 for Windows. No DMCA mumbo-jumbo... whoever did it just had no idea what they were doing.
Re:right... (Score:2)
Re:Extraordinary rendition? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Extraordinary rendition? (Score:2)
Nicely put.
I suspect that most Americans and associated countries dont even contemplate a revolution as a possibility; they are now too comfortable, and have been acclimatised to dissidents being identified before the crime has been committed. As a result, temperate large scale protests are the accepted means of people expressing their power and venting a bit of steam.
I certainly dont want Rome to crumble as it will bring down everything around it. It was
Re:Extraordinary rendition? (Score:2)
Not for three years anyway, they are only scared by people, and those people must be en mass. Though even given enough (witness the anti-war demonstrations in the UK prior to the Iraq war), the government can still proceed as it wants if there is enough time before the next demonstration of democracy, i.e an election.
Unfortunately, the general public are fairly timid, and unless the situation has affected them personally, in a direct ma
Re:Extraordinary rendition? (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear Prime Minister,
I have just read about extraordinary rendition on an online forum. This is a practice where the American government sends suspects overseas for interrogation and imprisonment. This practice is seen as a way of circumventing their obligations under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. If cases such as these are presented in an American court they are dismissed by the administration on "State Secrets" grounds.
In view of this I would like to ask the Prime Minister to;
*Assure me that we are in no way an accomplice, indirectly or directly, to this practice.
*Investigate these rumors for evidence.
*Act upon any evidence obtained.
I realise that America is the most powerful country in the world currently, but at the same time I don't think any moral person of our country would justify that as grounds for turning a blind eye to torture.
Yours sincerely, .
I doubt that will have any effect, but who knows, maybe she has received a thousands more like it. Good luck, I hope things improve for you. If it gets to bad, you will more than likely be welcome at this end of the world. We aren't totally screwed up in N.Z. yet (just a touch). Its a pity, America once epitomized hope for me. I believed in it standing for freedom, rights, humanity. When Neil Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I believed he meant for mankind. When I visited Los Angeles as a teenager, I liked the people. They were helpful and friendly....just good people. I still believe that most Americans are good people. At some point though, you have to stand for what you believe in or you will lose it. Even if you find it was a lie, it is still better to know.
Over the past five years my impressions of America have been destroyed by the actions of its government both at home and on the world stage. After reading Slashdot over the past year, there was a brief moment of hope that there were people still willing to lay down their comforts for the ideals expressed in your constitution. It seems now that Slashdot is a place were people say they stand for certain ideals, but the saying of it is enough for them. It is not enough for me.
Goodbye, good luck. BarefootGenius.Re:This is off topic, but I don't care (Score:2)
Look at it this way: ads generate revenue, but statistically, hardly anyone will install ad-blockers, so if you do, it has no significant effect. So you can avoid the ads, and not feel guilty (not sure why you'd feel guilty, but anyway).
It's kind of like how only a small proportion of people respond to spam, but it's statistically enough to ensure it's worth the spammer's time and resources to do it, so the rest of us have to put up with spam bec