FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network

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.'"

Comments

The KGB and Stasi. . .

[smooth wombat]

would be proud. To think they spent all those decades defending their spying on their citizens to promote stability and security and here we are following their example.

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?

It's not unknown anymore!

[HangingChad]

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.

Exactly!

[FatSean]

The same generation of people who shoved anti-USSR pro-USA propaganda down my throat in school are the ones trying to make the USA like the 1980s USSR they hated so much. "The USA is the best country because we have freedom of speech, and the government doesn't spy on you." they said. Now-a-days political speech at conventions is squealched and the government lackies can spy on the people with no need to get a warrant or create any other paper trail that could help a wrongfully-targeted citizen defend themself.

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!

[LWATCDR]

The FBI has been tapping phones since day one. In the US they must have a court order to do it. The fact that they use modern technology to do it just seems logical. This network shouldn't be a shock or frankly all that scary as long as they still require a court order to do it.
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.

Re:Exactly!

[soren100]

No your post shows that freedom of speech hasn't been limited. If it was then none of that info would be available.

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 :

The program was secret until 1971, when an FBI field office in Media, PA was burglarized by a group of left-wing radicals calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Several dossiers of files were taken and the information passed to news agencies, many of which initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[3]

Further documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the SWP, and a number of other groups. A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents are entirely censored. ...
The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI being used for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up "anarchists and revolutionaries" for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976.

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, 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.

Audit findings

[kalpol]

I posted, then actually RTFA....Page three lists some findings from an audit of the program - password problems, no individual logon IDs, a few other issues. This is what I do for a living, and it's been my experience (especially with government IT programs) that if you find problems such as these with logical access, it's likely there will be more general control problems such as developers with access to production environments, active IDs of terminated or transferred employees, and so on. The financial fraud element is probably not as much a concern with the FBI but there are other risks.

Re:Sounds a bit too smooth

[Sunburnt]

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, but surveillance of American citizens? Sadly, that's something I trust my government to do quite well.

Re:Sounds a bit too smooth

[Bartab]

Actually its pretty easy to keep something this large secret

All evidence to the contrary. Either the story is fake or it's not secret.

Where's OSAMA?

[Doc Ruby]

All this spying on Americans, justified by "the hunt for Osama bin Laden". But instead of catching him, Bush invaded Iraq. Said he doesn't spend much time thinking about Osama, doesn't think catching him is important. 6 years since 9/11/2001, and where's Osama?

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, 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?

Re:Sounds a bit too smooth

[Sunburnt]

Everything the Government does does suck and fail to work.

Really?

Really?

Really?

parrot standard /. groupthink ("Everything the government ever does sucks and doesn't work")

Everything the Government does does suck and fail to work.

Squawk!

Yes because

[Xonstantine]

That's because we needed to go back before the conservative movement decided to make government fail by underfunding it. the Federal government is certainly underfunded, spending only 2.8 trillion USD for 2008 under the proposed Bush budget.

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.

Let's hear the "tinfoil hats" catcalls now...

[Catbeller]

Yes, let the million "tinfoil hat" and "conspiracy theory" snarkers hold forth. Lemme explain:

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.

Re:Sounds a bit too smooth

[ArcherB]

That's because we needed to go back before the conservative movement decided to make government fail by underfunding it.

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.