Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This is the government - and the FBI. Somehow I can't believe it actually works as smoothly as that.
12:50 - press return.
Are you kidding me? The Bourne Ultimatum and The Simpsons Movie were actually on to something?
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Am I the only one surprised the government was able to pull a project like this off? Or is this just propaganda to make us think they are more competent than they really are?
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?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Forgive me for being old-fashioned and naive, but I was under the impression that law enforcement had to present a judge with probable cause before somebody could be wiretapped in the USA. Or is that, like, SO 20th century? Do we now have one-click warrants? Maybe Amazon should sue.
You realize, of course, the majority of the time this facility will be used to obtain free service from phone sex lines...
I piss off bigots.
I wrote a quick n dirty guide to building your own Echelon system here. It's amazing how easy it is.
My take is this: Privacy is dead. The only way to keep the playing field level is to make sure everyone has access...
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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?
Blar.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
I have nothing to hide.
Of course you don't, Anonymous Coward.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
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.
12:50 - press return.
Yea, those F-16 sure work like magic against IED's and snipers in gutters. A citizen militia on its home turf is damn nigh unbeatable - even Mussolini's early successes against the the Camorra and the 'ndrangheta only served to push them further underground. Such organisations can only be defeated by being wiped out entirely, all at once, along with the population that supports them. The other alternative is to deprive them of a reason to exist as paramilitary orgs by involving them (for real) in the above-board political game, like the Brits did with the IRA, i.e. to grant them at least a partial victory.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
...and is greeted by a recording saying
.mp3 of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons."
"I'm sorry. All of our Arabic language specialists are busy assisting other agents. Your call is important to the nation, so please do not hang up. Stay on the line and you will be assisted by the next available language specialist. The estimated waiting time for this call is six months and twenty-seven minutes"
followed by an overcompressed
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sheesh, you americans can never make up your mind, can you?
"The government is too big and wasteful. There's so much paperwork and useless red tape and hoops to jump through to do one simple little thing. There's so much money just thrown away! I wish they'd fix that."
"This new system is slick and efficient. It scares me. I wish they had lots of red tape, paperwork, and hoops. That would slow them down and protect my liberties."
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
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.
The last time I looked at changing cellphone carriers, my PRIMARY concern was looking for a carrier that wasn't involved in the NSA illegal wiretapping. ATT/Cingular were, of course, up to their necks in it, and other carriers admitted to being involved. But, at the time, I couldn't find anything about Sprint being involved and they had denied it. So, even with their horrible customer service, I stuck with Sprint. After seeing this article, I decided to start snooping around for more information. It isn't necessarily bad that Sprint runs a private network for the government, as long as it isn't abused. But then I found this: Sprint implicated in illegal NSA program. So, combined with my previous research, this means that EVERY MAJOR CELL CARRIER was involved in the NSA program. Conservatives will tell you that you have to vote with your wallet to change companies' behavior. Support the ones that don't allow illegally wiretapping, right? Well, when every major cell carrier is involved, and then, to make matters worse, they keep MERGING with one another, where do you turn? If the Constitution doesn't stop them, and the law doesn't stop them, and we can't select a company that is good because one doesn't exist, what are we to to? Our elected officials aren't listening. Just in terms of a cell carrier: is it possible to find one that probably wasn't involved in this crap?
The five gentlemen who were busted after an alert security guard noticed several locks tape down were installing wiretaps in the Democratic National Commitee's headquarters during the '72 presidential election.
How low-tech! They actually had to go attach wires to physical telephones!
Now, I'm not saying that this newfangled system would really be used to affect the outcome of the '98 election, but if it were done, it would be undetectable. No amount of alert security guards would catch the perpetrators.
I'm old enough to have lived through Watergate; the whole nation was in crisis.
Request your free CD of my piano music.