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AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA?
An anonymous reader writes "SpamDailyNews is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a brief that claims AT&T has been forwarding internet traffic directly into the hands of the NSA. The brief was filed under seal (a procedure that allows only the judge and the litigants to view the document) in order to give the court time to review the information. From the article: 'More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.'"
Well, assuming you're serious, the smmary says "forwarding to", not "routing via", so traceroute won't help you as it can't tell you where *copies* of all your packets are going.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
That why I do, and encourage others to, donate to the EFF.
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TFA links to an earlier article:
EFF alleges that AT&T, in addition to allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet communications passing over its network, has given the government unfettered access to its over 312 terabyte "Hawkeye" database, detailing nearly every telephone communication on AT&T's domestic network since 2001
Phones aren't nearly as safe as you think.
Get an analog cell phone. Get a data adaptor for it. (it's just an RJ-11 jack that plugs into the cell, and makes it act like a landline)
Yes, the cell phone has to be analog. Digital phones don't give you this option, due to the lossy compression.
Alternately, get a VOIP service that works with fax systems (important - takes more bandwidth, costs more money, but has not as lossy compression as cheap VOIP), and a good UPS.
It is just a matter of duplicating all the packets that traverses a router. Properly done you will not notice this.
On several occasions providers (SBC, MCI, Sprint) called us to help them comply with a federal wire tap. Our systems were made in a way such that you could not tell if a tap was being done, whether it was voice or data. Hardware duplicated the data and sent the copy to any location they wanted.
I think you would be amazed on how much the government listen to without anyone knowing, including most of the government. The right hand truely doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
Um, no it's not. You won't find those words ANYWHERE in the Constitution. The whole concept of Seperation of Church and State was mentioned in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote after the drafting on the Constitution. What the founding fathers wanted to stop was a system to where the Church IS the State. The Constitution in no way prohibits any and all dealings with a church or religion.
AT&T runs portions of the Internet backbone, and traffic from other countries can go through their network as well, like when computers in China go to microsoft's windows update site. Also, as a backbone provider, switching from one ISP to another may not keep your traffic from going through their network. Do a traceroute to various destinations, and its highly likely that no matter your ISP, you'll go through AT&T's network at some point. Even from another country.
The only viable way to keep traffic off of AT&T's network is for other backbone providers to refuse to route traffic through AT&T, and get alternative peering agreements up with other BB providers. This may not be a viable option, however, since AT&T carries enough traffic volume for the Internet that to effectively 'kick them off' the Internet may cause other BB providers to experience very heavy traffic loads.
If I was the government of a non-US country, I'd be canceling AT&T contracts today, given that AT&T did this on the sly.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
TAT 14, the latest transatlantic cable (circa 2001) has four fiber pairs. Each uses 16 wavelengths of STM-64 (10 Gbps). That is 640 Gbps total. ATT is part owner.
Also from the article: "The public deserves to know about AT&T's illegal program," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "In an abundance of caution, we are providing AT&T with an opportunity to explain itself before this material goes on the public docket, but we believe that justice will ultimately require full disclosure."
If Google can index the entire web with spiders that have to actually go out and find the data they're indexing, I think it's fairly likely the NSA can process information that's fed directly to them by internet providers.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
This is a bit bigger than people think. You can NOT just change ISPs and think you are voting with your dollars. That small ISP you go to is probably leasing lines from AT&T because they are not able to afford that much fiber. And AT&T could obtain the data at ANY point it takes a hop across a section of their cables. More than likely Verizon and QWEST are capable of this same thing... My company has had to deal with our ISP, Qwest, AT&T all at once because of the connections tieing our two facilities together ran through the different sections of cable. at some point AT&T most likely sees a chunk of like 70%+ of all internet traffic.
Email, where you surf, and im messages are not considered protected private communications. It is in the same category as a post card. Unlike a letter or phone call there isn't any expectation of privacy on network communications.
Might the odd person take a look at it? Sure. But if they all went through an intelligence agency for scanning and fingerprinting (equivalent of source IP) I would say that violates my understanding of privacy. Same way that when I move in public, someone might follow my movements. That is still very different from having a GPS bracelet locked around my foot transmitting my movements to the NSA whenever I'm in public. I mean, there's a big difference between being observed, e.g. walking by a security cam, and that being recorded and logged as person John Smith, SSN 45364436553 passing checkpoint 5432343 at 2:33 AM on July 5, 2005. Same goes for my email. I honestly don't care if some network techie somewhere ended up seeing my mail as part of some routine duty. I would object to it all being copied and sent to the NSA.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
AFAIK, the only fiber they're interested in laying is to span that last-mile to the home... something they swore up and down they were going to do ten years ago. And they got xx billions in tax breaks + fees for it.
There's plenty of unlit fiber lying around, just not in the last mile.
The "phone companies beginning to make a stink about charging people to carry traffic over their pipes" because they're looking at the next 10 years and thinking "Crap, the marketplace is getting saturated & prices are going to come down. How are we going to continue growing?"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How about a variety of encryption systems dating all the way back to post-WWII.
I know you probably meant that as a joke but the clipper chip was also invented by the NSA. Although it was controversial (allowing the government to listen to communication) the idea of key escrow did stay with us. Most of them use algorithms/techniques such as DES, El Gamal and Diffie-Hellman. This site goes into great detail concerning the different types of key escrow methods.
And another one is that an armed rebellion simply isn't viable anymore these days. A few hundred years ago, everyone had access to the same weapons, the same intelligence tools, the same everything, and soldiers were often volunteers or draftees; nowadays, you don't have access to any serious weaponry, you don't have the same access to information, and you don't have access to any kind of other military equipment, and most soldiers are indeed professionals who're well-trained and indoctrinated to blindly obey orders and think of you as "the enemy".
Even if 99% of the population *were* upset to the point of demanding change, what could they do? The soap box doesn't work because we live in a system where only two parties have the power, and where anyone else simply does not and never will stand a chance. The ballot box doesn't work because elections are manipulated. The jury box doesn't work because the "president" simply declares himself to be above the law, because congress is controlled by his own party as well, and because the courts are either powerless themselves (the lower courts) or gleichgeschaltet (SCOTUS). And finally, the ammo box won't work for the above reasons.
I still like to think that things aren't *that* bad... and maybe they aren't, compared to other countries like China. But I also really wonder whether what we see is only the tip of the iceberg, and if the iceberg itself isn't just as big as that in China, for example. Sure, you won't get arrested for being a member of a minor party, for example, but that may just be because there's no way for you to change things, anyway - you're being allowed the have the illusion that you can change things, which keeps you from seeing what things *really* are like and from *really* trying to change them.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The FISA Law covers "electronic surveillance" and that includes email. The government is therefore prohibited from domestic eavesdropping without a warrant or FISA court order.
RTFA. This is about the GOVERNMENT. Just because ATT is giving them information doesn't make it legal. It is still illegal wiretapping.
Time makes more converts than reason
What are you on?
TAT-14, the newest iteration of US-to-UK transatlantic communication cable, consists of 32 STM-64 circuits. Each STM-64 is capable of nearly 10 Gbps...
In other words, it's probably based on an unverified claim by an anonymous source?
From the EFF website:
"EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005."
Gee, I sure am glad they rushed to inform us.
From the same article:
The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.
"The public deserves to know about AT&T's illegal program," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "In an abundance of caution, we are providing AT&T with an opportunity to explain itself before this material goes on the public docket, but we believe that justice will ultimately require full disclosure."
C:\>tracert slashdot.org
.210.126]
Tracing route to slashdot.org [66.35.250.150]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
**CUT SOME**
5 56 ms 52 ms 62 ms te-2-1-ar01.absecon.nj.panjde.comcast.net [68.86
6 59 ms 69 ms 64 ms po10-ar01.audubon.nj.panjde.comcast.net [68.86.2
08.22]
7 58 ms 55 ms 52 ms 68.86.211.10
8 56 ms 69 ms 58 ms 12.118.114.17
9 62 ms 57 ms 60 ms tbr1-p012301.phlpa.ip.att.net [12.123.137.62]
10 68 ms 59 ms 59 ms tbr1-cl8.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.2.17]
11 65 ms 57 ms 62 ms ar5-a300s5.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.0.89]
See lines 9, 10, 11? see the part at the end? att.net? guess what that means?
try a tracert yourself.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You have noticed this too. Yet part of the problem is that even the NSA could be overloaded by too much information retention and analysis. My guess based on the various reports I have read in the British media, etc. is this problem is probably solveable using a more distributed approach. Interestingly, the British press reports have been fairly compatible with (yet prior to) the information about the NSA wiretapping program in the US.
My guess is that calls are probably stored for the duration of the call, and then if a certain threshold is met, it is probably stored longer-term. The call is probably rated based on voice print, key words used, number of flagged calls to or from either end, etc. I would assume that a similar process is probably used for analyzing internet traffic (although voice print doesn't apply to text data, one might be able to use a sylistic fingerprint of sorts).
Such filters would allow you to cut the number of stored calls/data transfers for further analysis down to a reasonable level. This data could then go to further processing. In essence, it would allow for a quality over quantity approach even if quite a bit of traffic.that reaches the threshold. A variable threashold would allow them to throttle traffic for storage/analysis (allowing them to process as much or as little as they deemed necessary at the time).
It is a serious threat to our republican form of government, and it is ironic that it should come to light under the watch of those who call themselves Republicans.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Read The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets then ask yourself if your professor is joking.
The EFF does not have a "losing record." Please stop repeating this. That was what appeared to be a hoax posting in the Register for some reason picked up in slashdot. It was simply made up. The hoax cited some lost cases that were not EFF cases. The EFF has a record of many significant victories, check out the web site. Of course the EFF does not win all the time, if we did it would mean we were being far too cautious in chosing what to defend, but please stop repeating this "losing record" stuff.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Simply put: It is illegal to tap any electronic communication (including email) without a court order.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)