Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
And you wonder why the feds have no problem with the AT&T monopoly getting back together? Can we file this under the "You-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your" department?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
As TFA says:
I can't think of any possible justification for the documents to be kept sealed, but I wouldn't be suprised if the government wades in complaining that these document are directly related to National Security, and, should therefore be kept sealed, or claim that it would endanger their own investigations.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
On the policy side, this is an issue of trust and secrecy. This kind of intelligence operation is something you want to be available due to its good uses (and don't want to know about it), but you are afraid of because of the way the government can abuse it. The current administration has greatly reduced my trust in the professionalism of the US intelligence agencies to the point where I'm willing to support this kind of lawsuit.
You know what the irony in this is? We make hideous fun of countries like China where this kind of thing is standard operating procedure, but when we do it, it's supposedly to protect us from the terrorists. How does something like this come about?
I can't repeat this quote enough:
The question burning in my mind is this: How much will it take? How far does the government have to go before everyone says, "Enough!" and finally recognizes the greater danger that we're all in? How badly does our government have to act before people take up the call to arms and start rioting in the streets of this outrageous behavior?
For all the I-have-nothing-to-hiders out there, let me make it clear: I do have things that I'd rather stay hidden, and it's none of your damn business, and none of George W. Bush's damn business, what they are. And whenever a government goober tells me, "Trust me," that's the first sign that I shouldn't. We shouldn't have to blindly trust the government, that's why we friggin' fought England over 200 years ago!
Needless to say, I'm sure as hell glad I don't have AT&T, because it saves me the trouble of cancelling my account and writing a nasty letter about why.
The problem is, MOST of us don't take our rights pretty damn seriously. When the patriot act was passed, people cheered the gub'ment for protecting them. Our society is complacent, living on the opinions spoonfed to them by a goverment that lies through its teeth to obtain its goals, and a corporate media that manipulates the information they recieve so they either don't realize or don't care that the government is giving more and more power to big business while taking away the rights of the average Joe.
Look at the issues in the elections, its all about gay marriage (taking away someone's rights to make them live the way you want them to) and other meaningless bullshit. No one is going to get elected running on a platform of restoring personal freedom. And that's truly sad.
I wonder, how long will it take for our government to realize that most of us take our rights pretty damn seriously
The scariest part is I don't know how true that is. Now I have no scientific polling or anything but just the people I speak to it seems the majority have the opinion:
- If your not doing anything wrong what are you worried about?
or
- Well we have to take care of our national security first before any rights really matter
That a government will so readily abuse its power is certainly not a suprise (disturbing but entirely predictable). However, the ease with which so many citizens seem ready to give up protections we have taken for granted is the scariest part (at least to me).
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
In 1999, I worked as a contract engineer for a Linux consulting company. We delivered kernel enhancements for the Linux kernel on the Alpha processor to the NSA. The enhancements we to reduce TLB miss overhead when doing comparisons and searches on large amounts of data. The benchmark run to test it was a keyword search through a stream of e-mails. This was to run on a *massive* cluster of Alpha machines. I would guess they've upgraded it several times since then.
1999 was while Clinton was still president, BTW.
(Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons. Though I've probably given enough information that they could narrow it down to about 10 people.)
Which is exactly why we need a state crackdown, and to spy on our own civilians! Who knows what the Enemy Within might be plotting? It would be disastrous if one of these people, with no respect for the rights and traditions of Western civilisation, were to infiltrate the corridors of power - imagine the damage that could be done!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This is how liberty dies. To thunderous applause.
One wonders where the public will draw the line. Reminds me of the recent Boston Legal monologue from the epsidoe "Stick It" where the lawyer (who gives the following monologue) is defending a woman against tax evasion charges. I find it very apt:
When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.
Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.
Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.
Stop for a second and try to fathom that.
At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?
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.
...the government monitors its citizens.
Oh, wait...
Nevermind. Nothing to see here, move on please.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Echelon is NOT a fairy tale.
The NSA has more computing power and human analyst brainpower than is probably believable.
Back in the days when I did NeXT machines and software development, I heard that the NSA bought 400 NeXT cubes. The joke was "of course they did...saves them a ton of money on black paint!"
I later heard that the NSA liked the fact that the magnesium case was a pretty effective RF shield.
And then I got to see a NeXT app, Zilla, that let you build an early parallel processing system. Now, 400 Motorola 68040 CPUs isn't a Cray, but it's close. NeXT used 50 cubes to crunch on Fermat's Theorem and got throughout similar to a Cray YMP48 (this was 1990-91, so I may be fuzzy on this, but that's what I think I heard)
So, if the NSA was dorking with massively parallel systems 15-20 years ago, where are they today?
Personally, I think they have the data acquisition capability...with or without AT&T, the processing power, and plenty of human talent to build the data sieves to extract something useful.
Wait a minute...there's a knock at my door................
I am my own gestalt.
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