Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic 566
Sir Tandeth writes "A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom giant forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a 'secret room' to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984. Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access. 'Klein was on Capitol Hill Wednesday attempting to convince lawmakers not to give a blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their secret cooperation with the government. He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. '"
I've read about this before. (Score:4, Informative)
Very scary stuff.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
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than on the outside?
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Funny)
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That link shows a bunch of photos a building's exterior. Not exactly the secret stuff spy movies are made of.
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Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK [wikipedia.org]
I'm not sure it's any worse than when it's justified by whatever the current bogeyman is. Could be terrorism, drugs, child porn, communism etc - it's always just a cover. Follow the money. Who gains from a powerful military, full prisons, terrible education and a fat, lazy corrupt police force?
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
With a few exceptions, the kinds of curtailment that are happening or being attempted now were not tried on a large scale when communism was the major scare. Instead, the fact that such measures weren't in place was held up as the difference between us and the communists.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
They hate us because we've been meddling in their governments, undermining their sovereignty, propping up dictators favorable to us, invading them when those propped up dictators fall out favor, all for our own national self interests.
I know your post was intended to be funny, and was, but the irony of situation is even worse.
Taking away our freedoms will never stop foreign terrorists from hating us for jerking their countries around. But it might well spawn an outbreak of domestic terrorism if they keep at it. The Unabomber was just a prelude, as the very type of stuff he lashed out about is coming to pass.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed some muslims want to kill us all. Does that warrant spending over http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2450753720071024 [reuters.com]2 TRILLION dollars mostly borrowed from the Chinese to kill them? Our president spends money like a teenager with a credit card, without care for who's going to have to pay it back or the price of interest. That kind of short-sightedness is going to screw us over in the next 30 years.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
America's position does put it at the top of the shitlist, but that doesn't mean that it's only targeted because of its foreign policies.
Islamic fundamentalism is alive and well in Africa, and there's also fundamentalist and terrorist activity in Canada. Islamic fundamentalism is also a problem in Britain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Australia.
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http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015804.php [jihadwatch.org]
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4006289a12.html [stuff.co.nz]
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2007/June/theworld_June713.xml§ion=theworld [khaleejtimes.com]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22663795-601,00.html [news.com.au]
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21403909-2,00.html?from=public_rss [news.com.au]
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21525531-421,00.html [news.com.au]
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21785791-421,00.html [news.com.au]
http://www.ne [news.com.au]
Culture warior... (Score:4, Funny)
What, like this one [amazon.com]?
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Re:Culture warior... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, actually, yes.
You see, all of the jihad is based on demagougery exploiting various, mostly unrelated, real or imagined grievances in the Arab world, and aims at creation of violence and warfare towards all and any comers who are unlike the target audience via indoctrination, lies, manipulation of facts etc and so on. At the forefront of the movement are loudmouth morons who spew constant stream of anti-everything-non-fundamentalist-Islam invective and rouse various sociopaths to action, mostly via small arms warfare combined with improvised explosives, punctuated by suicidal bomb attacks and a very rare spectacular terrorist assault on foreign soil, which results in few thousand casualties per year on average.
On the other hand we have demagougery exploiting various, mostly unrelated, real or imagined grievances in of the xenophobic, supremacist white subsectuion of American society, which aims at creation of violence and warfare towards all and any comers who are unlike the target audience via indoctrination, lies, manipulation of facts etc and so on. At the forefront of the movement are loudmouth morons who spew constant stream of anti-everything-non-white-upper-class-Christainst invective and rouse various sociopaths to action, mostly via large scale warfare, aerial bombardment and wholesale occupation of foreign nations, exctrajudicial imprisonment in Gulags, torture etc, with hundreds of thousands of casualties in Iraq alone in a period of 4 years.
In other words, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin etc are the ideological equivalents of Osama and various pontificating radical Imams in their various Madrassas. The difference is that their spew is empirically proven to be capable of causing vastly more damage and casualties than that of all the modern jihadis combined so far.
Perheaps that will change when the Pakistani nukes change hands to Taliban or Al-Queda and O'Reilly and Osama will start competing on more even terms.
None of which of course helps the more sane part of the humanity which is likely to caught in the crossfire caused by the blowhard morons of the world.
My dream is that one day all of the most insane of the violence promoting demagouges like O'Reilley, Coulter and Osama are all caught, given flamethrowers or some such and sent to an uninhabited island to practice what they preach on each other, while the rest of the world goes on about making our lives better. The last one standing gets to own the island where his followers are all sent as a punishment to listen to his or her whining 24/7 for the rest of their short lives.
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I have plain as day, empirical evidence to prove it: the "global jihad" is equipped with AK-47s, RPGs, some stolen explosives and what seems like an infinite supply of suicidal idiots. People whom O'Reilly, Coulter and Malkin (she substituted for O'Reilly on FOX) are in a position to influence control the most advanced army humanity ever constructed, complete with nuke tipped ICBMs, a
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Don't be fooled by this 'it's all our fault' mentality folks. There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture, hate 'our freedoms'. And they want to impose their islamic law upon the world. They would kill us if they could.
And again, they only w
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:4, Funny)
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Has John Pilger's excellent propaganda film The War on Democracy [imdb.com] shown in the US yet?
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I'm curious, also, as to how we offended the Barbary Pirates to make them capture our cargoes and ransom or impress our sailors.
There's definitely more to it than our meddling.
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And don't forget Pinochet. The US has been trying to control all the world: Vietnam, middle east, South America, Cuba, etc. Is it wrong that the US has gained enemies ALL AROUND THE WORLD?
ZOMG, the terrorists want to kill us all!!!!111one
Gee, I wonder why...
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Methinks not. You're going around telling people to read it when you probably don't even own one. There's a special word in there for Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and other religions similar to Islam. It's "dhimmi", which means People of the Book. The Qur'an says that Muslims should "not dispute with the Followers of the Book...except of those of them who act unjustly". It says that "[Muslims] believe in that which has been revealed to [them] and revealed to [the dhimmis],
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
You assuming at least a couple things here
A: That Agents are monitoring the traffic. Could be they are filtering for keywords. Storing for later review.
B: That they are looking at all the traffic.
And on fighting terrorism, how about we stop sending them money that ends up making
them such a valuable part of the world? And I don't know what is wrong with leaving
them alone, really. There is some legitimacy to their grievances, you know.
What is now Israel was Palestine ( and before that had a variety of owners,
none of them Jewish until you get *really* far back ). Britain decides for
partition, and you have to give up your homeland, your business, your home
so that a bunch of people who have been practicing terrorism in your country
can have a home? If it were you, you would be pissed, and fighting back,
so would I. Why is that so hard to understand? Now, don't go getting on any
"you must hate Israelis" thing, furthest thing from the truth. I understand
( and support ) the idea of Israel having a homeland, but I also understand
that the Palestinians want the same, and have been moved to provide it for
the Israelis. Not to mention all the building that Israelis have done in
the contested areas to attempt to annex those areas.
And America has involved itself in this conflict, supplying arms and money
to support Israel.
I don't know what all the answers are, but starting the discussion with
ignoring where all the parties are "at" is not wise.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Interesting)
"We learn in The Internet for Dummies that any two packet do not have to, and probably will not take the same route to get from A to B."
Quibbling. Are they copying data, and should they? That they are possibly not copying *all* has little relevance to the right/wrongness of this.
"First, it was the UN that partitioned that area, not Britain."
OK. It still was not an invitation by the Palestinians to come live with them.
It was an external decision imposed on the people living there.
"The Palestinians have a homeland."
And do they have control that that? I recall news articles from
after Hamas won the election about Israel cutting off tax revenue
to them. Doesnt sound like any kind of real homeland to me.
Would you consider it sufficient?
"The UN resolution did not give the land that Palestinians claim was Palestine and give it to the Israelis. They took a piece of land that was British"
A British colony, imposed by force by British arms.
The Palestinians were the ones living there.
"and gave half to Israel and half to the Palestinians."
If you have something, someone claims control of that
something, and gives half to you, half to someone else,
will you be satisfied?
"When Israel was attacked for being there (notice that British were not) by every neighboring Arab nation, they said, "Screw you people, we're taking it all!""
A: Every Arab nation is not Palestine.
B: I understand that part of the history. Yes.
And I understand that the Arabs were being very
hostile to Israel, and I understand how Israel
is not really liking that. They have legitimate
security concerns. I get it.
Believe it or not, I am not saying that the Palestinians are 100% right and
the Israeli's 100% wrong in this issue.
"Since then, they have given it back."
Have they?
"Still not good enough evidently. The Palestinians want to claim that all of the land that was once British was really Palestine and they want it all back."
It was Ottoman Empire, then a British colony after the war.
Again, it was still Palestinians living there. Africa, India,
Pakistan, America, Canada, etc, etc were all once British colonies.
What legitimacy do colonial holdings from centuries past have to
do with government today, especially with all that has been said
about self determination?
In other words, I don't think the Palestinians bought into the
"it's British" idea, it was still "theirs". The Western world
may have recognized it as British, but they likely didn't.
And once again, if you owned something, someone else claimed it,
and divided it and told you you could have half simply because
of the force of arms, would you walk away happy?
I don't know where you are politically or economically, but if
you have ever argued that taxes are stealing, or that they are
a government monopoly, unfair and imposed, this is the same
thing.
"That was 50+ years ago. At what point to give up? Would you support Native Americans lobbing mortars into New York from Jersey? Would you support them launching missiles into Detroit from a reservation in Michigan? What's the difference (other than this had always been Indian land)?"
Not much difference. There is also the Irish problem as an excellent
example. I don't know when to give up.
Also, an important distinction. I am *NOT* saying I *support* any of
the above using terrorism. I am saying I *understand* where they are
coming from, how they feel they don't have many other choices on the
matter. Also, recall that in negotiations, you don't get much from a
position of weakness. Reagan and Thatcher both argued that ( correctl
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Interesting)
People used to talk about the acres of computing facilities at the NSA. They're on the bleeding edge in all their tech- and you think they can't reconstitute some diversely-pathed packet data? Encryption? Please. If it's electronic, it's insecure. Get it through your heads.
love and peace.
-cheez
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is monitoring on a wire better just because it happens far away where you can't see it?
I suppose you feel that it's tolerable as long as government and law enforcement remain reasonably democratic and every officer of the law remains reasonably uncorrupted. But how long will they remain this way, and not succumb to the temptations inherent in these arrangements? Temptation has a very strong corrupting effect.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would rather die than allow the protections guaranteed to us by the Constitution to be stolen from us.
Anybody who would not is a wretched coward.
Charming (Score:3, Insightful)
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Turn their country of origin into a smoking wasteland and make it clear that anyone who follows suite will join them.
In other words, since the London bombers were British, let's turn Britain into glass. And since Timothy McVeigh was American, let's turn the US into a vast wasteland of radioactive glass.
Something tells me the British would oppose such a plan. The Americans, on the other hand, are much more bloodthirsty, and also much more act-first-and-think-only-later-(if-at-all). But somehow I think even the Americans would oppose a plan that turns the entire US into glass. You can erode their democracy all you want, bu
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Re:Shameful (Score:5, Insightful)
Your words are, frankly, insulting to the millions of individuals who lost their liberty, lives, property, and loved ones in REAL totalitarian states. Read the Gulag Archipelago sometime and get informed.
Another example is that the Jews were forced to wear the yellow "star of david" on their clothes in 1938. If they were to complain about the regulations and say that they were living in a "police state", then by your logic they could easily be ridiculed because the concentration camps such as Auschwitz had not been built yet -- construction on those started in 1940. By your logic the star of david is just a patch on a coat, nothing to be worried about, right? So by your words and logic they would be "frankly, insulting" their future selves who would be dying in the gas chambers two years later.
The problem with your logic is that you are saying that a person cannot complain about the totalitarian nature of his country until he can be killed for just complaining about the totalitarian nature of his country -- a "catch 22".
America is definitely becoming less and less free every day and more authoritarian -- that is very easy to see. The right of privacy is guaranteed by our constitution, and when it is public knowledge that our government is publicly ignoring that constitution that is definitely the time to complain. Our constitution was created to protect us from our government and when our government starts treating it like toilet paper it is time definitely time to do something.
America is no longer the "land of the free and home of the brave" and it is very much high time for everyone to start recognizing that fact and start speaking up. Trying to say that our government is not repressive enough or authoritarian enough to speak up about it is ridiculous. The people who were tortured and killed at Abu Ghraib and other places at the hands of our government would not find those words "frankly, insulting". They would say that those words are an understatement.
When people in America joke on a regular basis that if you say anything against the government that you might be sent to Guantanamo, and when our elected officials argue about whether or not repeatedly drowning someone and reviving them is torture, you can be pretty sure that we have crossed the line that divides a free state and an authoritarian state.
Re:Shameful (Score:4, Funny)
The NSA does not care about monitoring geeks in their Mom's basement.
Except maybe on breaks, when they need a good laugh...Re:I've read about this before. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given this data, it is entirely clear that there is no reason to believe that any non-encrypted data is not going to be monitored, recorded, and traced.
While we must try to abort this particular endeavor through the civil process, it is rather clear to me that it's likely to be a futile effort. The way I see it, as the technological capability for total surveillance draws closer, the government and commercial entities will not be far behind.
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While I doubt that they "save" all the traffic, it is entirely possible, that transmitted data is scanned for certain key words and the flagged packets are then investigated further.
Ummm...not likely. Take a look at this interview with Klein. [cryptogon.com] He says:
The paragraphs above that explain what he means in technical terms (including details of the peering done here), but basically when the NSA gets it, they get everything. What the NSA does with it from there is anybody's guess, but saving every
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most premature and inappropriate applications of Occam's Razor, this one fails the Thought For Seven Seconds test.
So they can't the whole internet. They sure as hell can have it split to go through their secret rooms in the telco's offices, where they can do whatever keyword searching or other simple analysis they want and then save off the portion that may be considered interesting.
The whole point is that he doesn't know what the NSA is doing with the data, he only knows that he set up the splitters to route a copy of all the data into the secret room.
The "and they're saving everything to disk" part is something that someone here made up and now has apparently become an official part of the "conspiracy theory". So if that part doesn't make sense, the whole thing must be a lie! Except no, it doesn't work that way.
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But all people remember is that the first document that was made public was fake. T
Are you saying Bush faked his Guard documents? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems upon first reading that you're claiming the Bush camp faked the documents that Rather lost his career over.
Did I misread you?
And if not,could you please source that? Your link doesn't address it at all. I haven't heard that accusation before, and would like to see something to support it.
Re:I've read about this before. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16088947&ft=1&f=1 [npr.org]
One thing he mentions: The NSA likely has installations like this maybe a dozen of locations around the country.
New meaning to the phrase... (Score:5, Funny)
That's the key question in this case. (Score:2)
An optical splitter is like a piece of wire; in order to intercept any traffic off a fiber cable, you need to look at the information carried by all the photons.
What hasn't (and never will) been established is to what extent the boxen in the s00per-s33kr1t room dumped petabytes the domestic-origin-to-domestic-endpoint packets on the floor before logging the terabytes of foreign-to-domestic (or domestic-to-foreign) traffic to storage, or if No Such Agency is filli
it's not stealing (Score:2, Insightful)
This being slashdot, that should be ok with most folks here.
whoes talking about stealing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are somehow confusing the right to privacy with disseminating other peoples already released intelectual property. The issues are not even remotely similar. Of course this being slashdot, you have been wildly and incorrectly modded up.
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Encrypt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Informative)
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No warrant, no searches or seizures of my stuff. They are particularly prohibited from searching through all of my correspondence without a warrant.
A warrant? That's so 20th Century.....
Re:Encrypt (Score:5, Informative)
Fine. Have you by any chance ever read the 10th Amendment?In other words, if the Constitution is unclear and there is no relevant law then the Federal Govt. has no power whatsoever to intercept our Internet traffic.
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There is a difference between what the government accidentally hears shouted across
a crowded room, and the government actively seeking to occupy all rooms so that they
can hear every conversation, whispered, shouted or spoken in code.
I would argue that government should not be so seeking without probably cause and a warrant
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Encrypt your data and spank these lawless assholes.
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That doesn't make it a bad idea to close and lock your front door.
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If you're using public key encryption, it isn't that much work for telcos to act as an encryption proxy to whomever you're connecting to, which pretty much kills any encryption you're using.
Only true way to stop spying is shared key encryption, which is completely unrealistic for broad use.
Re:Encrypt (Score:4, Informative)
Is it possible you've confused public key cryptosystems in general with systems based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange that provide protection against eavesdroppers but not man-in-the-middle attacks?
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If you're the government, how hard do you think it would be to tamper with those signature databases to make them match the man in the middle?
RSA signatures work against your run-of-the-mill hacker, but does not stop telcos/gov from doing this.
Re:Encrypt (Score:4, Informative)
The first bold part is what commonly makes the second bold part untrue.
Unless Alice has personally verified that the key she has is in fact Bob's key and vice versa, then she doesn't know for sure that it's Bob's public key that she's using. If Alice just get Bob's public key off the internet itself, then Alice doesn't know that it was Bob Alice was talking too and it may actually be Charlie's public key that she received. If it is in fact Charlie's public key, then Charlie can act as a man-in-the-middle. Alice unknowingly sends a message to Charlie with Charlie's public key, he decrypts it, re-encrypts it with Bob's public key, then sends it on to Bob. Neither will ever know.
People get around this by using certificates which come from a Certificate Authority whom they trust and who verifies that the keys you received are really Bob's keys and not Charlie's. The same problem shows up here, though, since at the point where Alice is communicating with the certificate authority over the internet, the CA is basically Bob and she's in the same boat.
People get around this part of the problem by having the Certificate Authority's keys hard-coded inside their browsers and OSes. There are two problems with this, one general and the other specific. The general problem is that if you get your browser over the internet, once again you can't be sure that the CA's key is really the right key and that the MD5 hash is really the MD5 hash of the unmodified browser. The specific problem is that this whole article is about the government getting telecom companies to cooperate with their spying programs. The Certificate Authority's usually fall into that category, and it would be naive to assume that they haven't handed over to the government their private keys, in which case NSA-Charlie doesn't even need to feed you a fake CA key somehow, he can just flat out pose as CA-Bob.
It is fundamentally impossible to share cryptographic keys securely over an insecure communication network. This is known as "the key exchange problem", and it's really, literally, impossible to fix. The only way to truly be secure when exchanging keys is for Alice and Bob to step outside the insecure network and physically meet in person, and exchange keys and verify that the other person has the correct key.
So if you're really so paranoid that you feel you must encrypt all your communications to keep the government from spying on you, just remember this, and find an off-line way to exchange public keys with everyone you wish to talk to.
0 Comments 0 Full 0 Abbreviated 0 Hidden (Score:2)
Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
Why else to you think it's going to San Fransisco? (Score:2, Funny)
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"All" internet traffic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"All" internet traffic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"All" internet traffic? (Score:5, Funny)
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Not to mention that they're only looking at certain type of packets I'd imagine... ignoring streaming video and the like and focusing on email, instant messaging, slashdot posts...
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A petabyte of storage from EMC^2 is $4m. It's not that much of a stretch to believe they have 10-20 of these things sitting in that room...or even something bigger/better...
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RIAA subpoenas the NSA for Records (Score:2)
Now that is sort of worrying (Score:2)
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along
Seriously ( FBI/NSA/DHS SUCKS ) who would have thought they would try to monitor the ENTIRE internet? Certainly not George Orwell. Makes you wish Dueling politicians were a more common day occurrence, doesn't it? I'm sure we could even manage to use sports stadiums rather than the Whitehouse lawn. Talk about reality tv...
As they stand back to back, sports center anchors are whispering into their mics, telling the audience the voting history of each combatant, theorizing what a loss on either side would mea
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If enough people do this, then all mails will be unreadable due to the noise level (let alone them trying to crack a code that is utter garbage).
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That rant being said, it's pretty damned clear that the politicians and their bureaucratic underlords/overlords have decided to test once again the bounds of using public safety as an excuse to reduce rights. The Founding Fathers knew this, and hoped that the Cons
Anything about this in AT&T Privacy Statement? (Score:5, Interesting)
If there's no "we allow an obscure government agency look at everything you read, write, say and listen to without court order or accountability" clause, can we sue the fuckers?
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Just because they dont have the space... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's like some bad Soviet Russia joke... (Score:5, Funny)
Olbermann? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Olbermann? (Score:5, Insightful)
But still, it's a good thing we have Fox News. Otherwise where would I get all the newest info on my favorite celebrities (what's that silly Paris up to today)? Or how I would know which ethnic/religious/political group to direct my hatred towards?
I really don't see what the problem is (Score:3, Funny)
NOTHING!
*Unless you smoke weed, use p2p or jaywalk, in which case you're a bad guy and you deserve to go to jail.
ALL Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of that anecdote from years back about a question asked by a clueless user on how he can "download all of the Internet" at once and take it with him...
Seriously, are we supposed to believe, that "virtually all" of AT&T Internet traffic passes through one facility in San Francisco? It is likely, they have the same rooms in all major nodes, though...
Which brings us back to those earlier laws obliging phone companies to maintain equipment in all central offices, which would allow the government to eavesdrop on anybody's phone calls. Sure, the police needed a warrant to actually perform the eavesdropping. But the equipment and the facilities ("secret rooms") are always there.
What they most likely don't need a warrant for is the statistics — did the number of calls to so-and-so suddenly increase? Did he call such-and-such after this-and-this called him?..
Most likely, NSA is looking for similar things on the Internet — there is a lot of insight to be gained from simply knowing, which sites get more traffic in (possible) correllation with certain events... And then, again, there is a need for the equipment to always be there, so that warranted intercepts of the datastreams can be performed too.
Yes, this is prone to abuse. No, it can not be effectively audited by the public without "compromising" (or even "jeopardizing") "the mission". The only relief comes from the knowledge, that any evidence illegally collected still can not be used against anyone in the court of law...
No shit sherlock ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats bush & co for you. No surprise at&t is the name that comes up with them. after all, its 'for the boyZ', right ?
Credentials?! (Score:5, Interesting)
With only 20 of those facilities, and just in AT&T locations, the fibertaps wouldn't even have a significant percentage of traffic going through them. Do some traceroutes; do some ping tests; Try it from different providers. They would have to be routing all traffic through those points. Your ping times would know, and the global BGP tables would know.
I have a comfortable tinfoil hat. What I *could* be easily convinced of is that the NSA has taps on all oceanic fiber. That's much easier to do, since there's not all that many. And...frankly, they should be. We pay them a lot of money to keep us safe. A *lot* of money. But I don't think this is the guy to listen to regarding something this big and damning.
Re:Credentials?! (Score:5, Interesting)
or planner this company employs. They are engineers in title only. If you want
to know how things work within a Central Office, go ask the folks who work in it.
They have far better insight than the planners do.
The ONLY other possible explanation for having a room full of equipment locked up
would be a co-located company. It's not uncommon for other carriers to have
equipment in the office that's unaccessible to AT&T and vice versa.
However, none of them require a government clearance to gain entry. Just a
simple key. Nor are they usually hidden from view. They simply put up wire cages
to restrict access to the rooms in question.
All it will take is an audit of the fibers in question and the splitters. If the
splitters actually exist on the backbone fibers and they route into that room, then
AT&T will have some explaining to do. Simple as that.
The theory I've kicked around is this type of equipment will have a specific eqpt
code in the databases AT&T uses. ( Assuming it's inventoried at all. Though the
word document produced indicates that it might be ) Shouldn't be all that tough to run
an eqpt scan against a Central Office CLLI code to see if it shows up in the
inventory. . . .
Just a theory mind you
Now as to the percentage of the internet comment I saw earlier.
Do you actually believe this is the ONLY office this type of setup is installed in ?
Please. If this gear is what we all think it is, then the major Toll buildings
( read that the major hubs ) will likely ALL have this gear installed in it. It's
just a matter of figuring out which offices have been compromised. Probably easy to
spot. Find the biggest serving office in any given city and start your search there.
It's also doubtful they are saving the Internet in real time. It's more than likely
a scan and flag type setup. It's likely not even done on site. It's far more probable
that the redirected traffic is shipped out another fiber that is directly connected to
an NSA office in the region.
For the encryption comment:
The day we start encrypting everything on the net will be the day you see the bills
popping back up to keep those ' terrorist tools ' out of the hands of the average
citizen.
Not as Hard as You Think (Score:3, Informative)
No it wouldn't. It's called sampling. Red flags and segmenting certain layers and patterns. You don't have to store a fraction of the traffic data to analyze it and store what you need.
I won't say what I do, but I do it for a fortune 50 company, and I personally analyze an obscene amount of internet traffic. I do all this with a few servers and a workstation. Now I can honestly I say I have probably analyzed .5% of the internet's traffic (doesn't sound like much, but it is). With the differnet software we use and the relatively small amounts of hardware we use, I can easily imagine scaling that to 100% without too much problems. You'd need a lot more people, better alogorithms, and much more processing and storage space. But it's definitely possible.
And you don't even need to do 100%. As I pointed out before, you can segment your data and sample it for what you are looking for. Or data mine samples if you don't know what you are looking for. Find the flags you want, and apply that accross the whole traffic spectrum.
Pretty scary. Allthough my first thought is that this is used for counter-terrorism activities, I can't help but think that's instead used for political purposes as well. Who knows. Big brother indeed.
AT&T is not the only stooge, we are also (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, stop you damned moaning?! This story is false because it fails to ask you what the f**k you are going to do about it? If nothing you are the problem! I'm going to do the norm. Write a litter. How that hell is this the "Home of the free?" Were monitored more than a Jewish school in Germany in the 1930's. Okay, Hitler was bad, and he was worse than this, but he sure would have thought it a damned nice item.
I'm not even going to insult you by listing all we've lost in freedoms. That would be whining. Lost. That sure as hell is the wrong word. we gave away freedoms like offerings to a pagan god(and not one of the cool ones). We burned them by the bushel. Can you buy a house without showing ID? How easy is it to wire funds. Oh, we'll catch a few, but we'll have to except being tracked watched and ID'ed any time we want to do something.
All that, rather than solving the problem. All the fuss. All the paranoia. All the tracking, monitoring, and so on. It's got the be the biggest sexual fetish for the inner fascist bubbling to the surface of America.
Do something to stop it, or I'm pointing at you and saying "You are all for it. You are fascism's little cheerleader, By saying nothing. You did this."
Oh Come On, People! (Score:3, Funny)
I am SO never getting a job with those guys...
Re:Doubtful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oops, I just noticed you were modded flamebait, and rightfully so. FUD applies more to your post than the article.
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, so what that it's basically impossible to avoid either using Bizzaro-FedEx or have them handle your document at some point, they're a MONOPOLY CORPORATION and not the government, so that magically makes it moral and legal *coughfruit of a poisoned treecough* for them to help the government spy on you by pr