How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World

slugo sent in this Wired story which opens, "A lucky coincidence of economics is responsible for routing much of the world's internet and telephone traffic through switching points in the United States, where, under legislation introduced this week, the U.S. National Security Agency will be free to continue tapping it. ...International phone and internet traffic flows through the United States largely because of pricing models established more than 100 years ago... The United States, where the internet was invented, was also home to the first internet backbone. Combine that architectural advantage with the pricing disparity inherited from the phone networks, and the United States quickly became the center of cyberspace as the internet gained international penetration in the 1990s."

Comments

Does UKUSA expand it?

[CRCulver]

James Bamford has written (in Body of Secrets ) about the NSA can depend on the help of other countries, namely the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, to intercept communications for the U.S. What major Internet pipes run through those three countries (well, probably not much through NZ)?

Re:Does UKUSA expand it?

[wakim1618]

A friend of mine is teaches at a major university in the UK and is in charge of graduate studies in her program this year. After receiving a package for a graduate student who seemed very bright and enthusiastic at the interview, she later received an email that the student will not be coming for reasons the student could not state. Meanwhile there was a large mysterious package for the student that was sent by the same person who had previously sent packages to the department. My friend opened the package and it turns out the person was a stalker. She left a message with the student and was contacted by...

some arm of the US government in charge of protecting US campuses. She was shocked when they repeated back to her all her phone calls trying to find out the source of the mysterious package. The officer who called my friend also had access to her email correspondence with the stalker who had initially presented himself as a philanthropist. The student is American but the stalker is based neither in the US or UK but the officer claimed that they also managed to tap all his phones at several residences in Canada and in the UK. Moreover, the officer told my friend of other related phone calls and emails from other members of her department.

The extent to which the wiretapping powers has been extended from fighting terrorists who would kill thousands of people to a single crazed stalker is shocking.

Re:Does UKUSA expand it?

[YttriumOxide]

Metered? yes... expensive? Depends on your viewpoint. I always thought my connection there was really well priced. AUD$64.95 a month for 10Mbit down, 1.5Mbit up. (and limited to 36GB a month - 12GB "on peak" and 24GB "off peak". After which, I would be capped to near dial-up speeds (but not charged any extra))

Since I've moved to Europe, I find the prices here for a slower connection to be MUCH cheaper, but if I want something the speed I had in Australia, I'll pay almost much in Euro as I used to in AUD.

Re:Does UKUSA expand it?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Think about it - they show up after all services have been pretty much suspended and, without any sort of justification, attempt to take away your means of self defense. They aren't going to stick around to defend you either, so you're basically being stranded in hostile territory with no means of defense. In my mind, this is the same as taking someone's horse - horsethieves are hanged.

Re:Is it time to build a new internet now?

[Nursie]

I think it would probably be more of an issue if the governments of the allies in question - like the UK for instance - weren't also spying on everything they can and exchanging onformation with each other.

It's like a big law-circumventing trading association. You can't wire tap an individual or set of individuals in your country because they're citizens, you have no legal grounds and your law prevents it? Well that other country over there can because they're not his citizens.

Then you can buy the intelligence from that country (again somehow not illegal) or maybe exchange it for a little info on his citizens that you've collected...

It's a sickening bending of the rules by governments to spy on their own citizens.

Doubtful data

[johnw]

I'd be very doubtful of the information shown by that graph. It seems to suggest that there's more telephone traffic between London and Western Australia, and between the USA and eastern Australia than there is between the two bits of Australia. Even if you accept that unlikely fact, why is that people in Western Australia phone London and people in eastern Australia don't?

I suspect that the graph has been prepared from data which simply shows where calls passing through the USA and London have originated. Calls which don't pass through a few nominated hubs simply haven't been included, which is obviously going to lead to the distorted results shown.

Re:Credit Where it's Due

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf are you talking about? Coaxial cables, telecoms as a science, routing, protocols, electricity were all 'invented' by different people in different countries. Many parts of the modern internet were driven by USA military but so were many fuck-ups that fell by the way-side. The modern internet is one of the greatest modern inventions and I wish people would stop trying to claim it.

Re:Switchboard for whom?

[arivanov]

Most of "your" traffic does not. All of your data does.

Due to the very low capacity available on the direct Eu to India route around the Arabian peninsula most traffic between EU and India traverses USA. Considering how much of your data processing is being outsourced you can guess from there on.

Which reminds me, frankly, the data EU commissioners should start requiring compliance statements for all transit communication traffic, not just processing entities abroad the way they do now.