Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic

Sir Tandeth writes "A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom giant forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a 'secret room' to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984. Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access. 'Klein was on Capitol Hill Wednesday attempting to convince lawmakers not to give a blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their secret cooperation with the government. He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. '"

Comments

I've read about this before.

[morgan_greywolf]

You can read Klein's April 2006 statement in his own words here and there are pictures of the secret room at AT&T here.

Very scary stuff.

Re:I've read about this before.

[cavtroop]

and there are pictures of the secret room at AT&T here [wired.com] Hmm, interesting. Two pictures of random signs that could be anywhere, and two pictures of the front of the building. None of which show anything remotely interesting. Incriminating stuff, that :) Not that I don't think they do this, just that the pictures are....underwhelming...

Re:I've read about this before.

[PhreakinPenguin]

So if I post 4 images of the EXTERIOR of the main AT&T building, can I get modded informative too?

Re:I've read about this before.

[purpledinoz]

What's worse is that this will be justified under the guise of anti-terrorism. As bills get passed to erode the freedom of American's, I'm watching the US slowly descend into totalitarianism. Lets face it, Americans just don't care. And why should they? They live comfortable lives, entertained with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. If they follow the rules, they won't get hassled. Things will have to get pretty bad until people wake up and realize what has happened.

Re:I've read about this before.

[TheMeuge]

While I doubt that they "save" all the traffic, it is entirely possible, that transmitted data is scanned for certain key words and the flagged packets are then investigated further. I think it isn't unreasonable to suspect that the ENTIRE web traffic moving in and out of the computers of some AT&T clients is recorded.

Given this data, it is entirely clear that there is no reason to believe that any non-encrypted data is not going to be monitored, recorded, and traced.

While we must try to abort this particular endeavor through the civil process, it is rather clear to me that it's likely to be a futile effort. The way I see it, as the technological capability for total surveillance draws closer, the government and commercial entities will not be far behind.

Re:I've read about this before.

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, it seemed like the last time I looked at those pictures, there were more of them. Of course, they were of the outside of the secret room, and not of the inside, but anyway, there were more. My tinfoil hat is going on now.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Threni]

> What's worse is that this will be justified under the guise of anti-terrorism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

I'm not sure it's any worse than when it's justified by whatever the current bogeyman is. Could be terrorism, drugs, child porn, communism etc - it's always just a cover. Follow the money. Who gains from a powerful military, full prisons, terrible education and a fat, lazy corrupt police force?

Re:I've read about this before.

[Luke Dawson]

As bills get passed to erode the freedom of American's, I'm watching the US slowly descend into totalitarianism.

Actually, it's a really clever way of defeating terrorism, one that the terrorists will never catch on to! You see, since they hate us for our freedom, if we eliminate all of these pesky freedoms, the terrorists will have nothing to hate us for anymore! See, it makes perfect sense :)

Re:I've read about this before.

[jgarra23]

Lets face it, Americans just don't care. And why should they? They live comfortable lives, entertained with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. If they follow the rules, they won't get hassled.

Thank goodness that's not the meaning of your post :) This saturation of bland media with metro-sexual men running all over the place is just what right-wing America wants to pull the fleece over our eyes despite their claims to the contrary and complaints about it. The left is just as bad though. They both complain about the media they so dearly love that dulls and confuses the masses into submission. Oh man... it makes me sick... HBO On Demand, TV On Demand, Movies On Demand, Sports On Demand, real information about how you are being fleeced, nowhere to be seen here!

Re:I've read about this before.

[darjen]

What's worse is that this will be justified under the guise of anti-terrorism. As bills get passed to erode the freedom of American's, I'm watching the US slowly descend into totalitarianism.

This is nothing new. It was all part of the neoconservative plan against communism before the Soviet Union fell. The new focus on terrorism is allowing them to continue their Big Government agenda. Lest you doubt what I'm saying, here it is straight from William F Buckley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F_Buckley#First_books

We have got to accept Big Government for the duration--for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. ... And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington...

Re:I've read about this before.

[morgan_greywolf]

While I doubt that they "save" all the traffic, it is entirely possible, that transmitted data is scanned for certain key words and the flagged packets are then investigated further. Ummm...not likely. Take a look at this interview with Klein. He says:

"I flipped out," he said. "They're copying the whole Internet. There's no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything."

The paragraphs above that explain what he means in technical terms (including details of the peering done here), but basically when the NSA gets it, they get everything. What the NSA does with it from there is anybody's guess, but saving everything probably seems unreasonable, but then again, how much storage does the NSA have?

Re:I've read about this before.

[Duhavid]

Maybe the room is like TARDIS, bigger on the inside
than on the outside?

Re:I've read about this before.

[UdoKeir]

I'm not sure I trust this source. Not that I don't think this is/was happening, but this guy could be a deliberate plant to discredit any investigations into the NSA's actions. The Bush camp has done this kind of thing before. That document that came out during the 2004 election is a prime example. It was poorly faked, but actually contained accurate information: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/15/60II/main643768.shtml

But all people remember is that the first document that was made public was fake. They forget or ignore that people who were around at the time have testified to the authenticity of the information.

I expect this guy will get "outed" as a crank in the next few weeks and nobody will pay attention to any revelations that are subsequently made.

Re:I've read about this before.

[erroneus]

Oh yeah? Go take pictures of important buildings in the middle of the day across town and see if you don't get questioned by the police after a few hours?

Re:I've read about this before.

[vux984]

But alas, they don't hate us for our freedom and never have. So we're very busily and efficiently solving the wrong problem.

They hate us because we've been meddling in their governments, undermining their sovereignty, propping up dictators favorable to us, invading them when those propped up dictators fall out favor, all for our own national self interests.

I know your post was intended to be funny, and was, but the irony of situation is even worse.

Taking away our freedoms will never stop foreign terrorists from hating us for jerking their countries around. But it might well spawn an outbreak of domestic terrorism if they keep at it. The Unabomber was just a prelude, as the very type of stuff he lashed out about is coming to pass.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Duhavid]

"Next, I don't buy it because it's not feasible. How many NSA agents would it take to monitor ALL Internet traffic."

You assuming at least a couple things here
    A: That Agents are monitoring the traffic. Could be they are filtering for keywords. Storing for later review.
    B: That they are looking at all the traffic.

And on fighting terrorism, how about we stop sending them money that ends up making
them such a valuable part of the world? And I don't know what is wrong with leaving
them alone, really. There is some legitimacy to their grievances, you know.
What is now Israel was Palestine ( and before that had a variety of owners,
none of them Jewish until you get *really* far back ). Britain decides for
partition, and you have to give up your homeland, your business, your home
so that a bunch of people who have been practicing terrorism in your country
can have a home? If it were you, you would be pissed, and fighting back,
so would I. Why is that so hard to understand? Now, don't go getting on any
"you must hate Israelis" thing, furthest thing from the truth. I understand
( and support ) the idea of Israel having a homeland, but I also understand
that the Palestinians want the same, and have been moved to provide it for
the Israelis. Not to mention all the building that Israelis have done in
the contested areas to attempt to annex those areas.

And America has involved itself in this conflict, supplying arms and money
to support Israel.

I don't know what all the answers are, but starting the discussion with
ignoring where all the parties are "at" is not wise.

Re:I've read about this before.

[j_166]

Leprechauns?

Re:I've read about this before.

[Chris Burke]

Just like many other conspiracy theories, this one fails the Occam's Razor test.

Like most premature and inappropriate applications of Occam's Razor, this one fails the Thought For Seven Seconds test.

So they can't the whole internet. They sure as hell can have it split to go through their secret rooms in the telco's offices, where they can do whatever keyword searching or other simple analysis they want and then save off the portion that may be considered interesting.

The whole point is that he doesn't know what the NSA is doing with the data, he only knows that he set up the splitters to route a copy of all the data into the secret room.

The "and they're saving everything to disk" part is something that someone here made up and now has apparently become an official part of the "conspiracy theory". So if that part doesn't make sense, the whole thing must be a lie! Except no, it doesn't work that way.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Boronx]

They won't throw out the constitution, they will give it the same lip service that the Emperors gave the Roman Senate.

Re:I've read about this before.

[cheezus_es_lard]

A couple of notes. AT&T is one carrier- it's likely the other US carriers, such as Qwest, Verizon, etc. are all doing the same thing. CALEA has done a lot for voice in the auto-intercept arena, and they're all compliant with it- hence the presence of automatically-receptive departments at the telcos who _already deal with these people_. Installing splitters and a 'secret room' isn't that far fetched, considering that most CO facilities already use 10% splitters on their fiber backbones for testing purposes, installing another set to route to the NSA doesn't seem that hard. In the dark room, have yourself a bunch of fiber gear designed to recreate the incoming signal and coupled with packet re-assemblers which reconstitute the data streams and mine those that are tagged interesting, and route them directly over DS-3, OC-3 or better (who knows how much dark fiber NSA's got in use?? 49 billion buys a lot...) into the NSA's intercept facility. All of a sudden diverse paths, multihoming, even Tor seem less capable of obfuscating your data's origins- your different paths are all re-constituted at NSA, and then mined for intel. Combine this with a broader-scale mining of data focused on terrorism, drugs, any topic of interest, and you have a massively broad filter capable of doing heuristics on national trends on any different topic, as well as a tool for law enforcement to gather intel for both domestic (warrantless wiretaps, anyone) and foreign surveillance- large portions of Internet transit the USA.

People used to talk about the acres of computing facilities at the NSA. They're on the bleeding edge in all their tech- and you think they can't reconstitute some diversely-pathed packet data? Encryption? Please. If it's electronic, it's insecure. Get it through your heads.

love and peace.
-cheez

Re:I've read about this before.

[QuickFox]

How does monitoring bits over a wire limit your freedom If a CIA officer followed you everywhere, always two steps behind you, registering and reporting every opinion you utter and every person you contact, would you feel that your freedom and your democratic rights were being respected?

Is monitoring on a wire better just because it happens far away where you can't see it?

I suppose you feel that it's tolerable as long as government and law enforcement remain reasonably democratic and every officer of the law remains reasonably uncorrupted. But how long will they remain this way, and not succumb to the temptations inherent in these arrangements? Temptation has a very strong corrupting effect.

or prevent you from voting? Democracy isn't just voting. Lots of countries have voting without being democratic.

Re:I've read about this before.

[jo42]

Follow the money. Who gains from a powerful military, full prisons, terrible education and a fat, lazy corrupt police force? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the 'middle class' gets screwed over even more.

Re:I've read about this before.

[QuickFox]

Some people also don't believe that the Constitution is a suicide pact. Far, far more people die from traffic accidents than from terrorism. It would make far, far more sense to sacrifice freedom and democracy for the sake of saving traffic lives. The same goes for tobacco, alcohol, and many other causes of death. Terrorism is really tiny. Sacrificing democracy for such a tiny cause makes no sense.

Re:I've read about this before.

[SuperJames_74]

I don't know if it's totalitarianism so much as it is fascism.

Check out this piece comparing Bush to Hitler.

The Constitution was designed to alert the population when a president is changing the government into something else. That's why we hear so much about Bush violating the Constitution - he's trying to change our government into something else. Whether he's consciously targeting fascism, or it's a happy coincidence, I don't care - either way, it sucks and I'll be VERY GLAD to see him go.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Martin Blank]

Could be ... communism

With a few exceptions, the kinds of curtailment that are happening or being attempted now were not tried on a large scale when communism was the major scare. Instead, the fact that such measures weren't in place was held up as the difference between us and the communists.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Duhavid]

"Well, the post says ALL TRAFFIC. (it does go on to say all of AT&T's traffic, however). Even so, it's not feasible"
"We learn in The Internet for Dummies that any two packet do not have to, and probably will not take the same route to get from A to B."

Quibbling. Are they copying data, and should they? That they are possibly not copying *all* has little relevance to the right/wrongness of this.

"First, it was the UN that partitioned that area, not Britain."

OK. It still was not an invitation by the Palestinians to come live with them.
It was an external decision imposed on the people living there.

"The Palestinians have a homeland."

And do they have control that that? I recall news articles from
after Hamas won the election about Israel cutting off tax revenue
to them. Doesnt sound like any kind of real homeland to me.
Would you consider it sufficient?

"The UN resolution did not give the land that Palestinians claim was Palestine and give it to the Israelis. They took a piece of land that was British"

A British colony, imposed by force by British arms.
The Palestinians were the ones living there.

"and gave half to Israel and half to the Palestinians."

If you have something, someone claims control of that
something, and gives half to you, half to someone else,
will you be satisfied?

"When Israel was attacked for being there (notice that British were not) by every neighboring Arab nation, they said, "Screw you people, we're taking it all!""

A: Every Arab nation is not Palestine.
B: I understand that part of the history. Yes.
And I understand that the Arabs were being very
hostile to Israel, and I understand how Israel
is not really liking that. They have legitimate
security concerns. I get it.

Believe it or not, I am not saying that the Palestinians are 100% right and
the Israeli's 100% wrong in this issue.

"Since then, they have given it back."

Have they?

"Still not good enough evidently. The Palestinians want to claim that all of the land that was once British was really Palestine and they want it all back."

It was Ottoman Empire, then a British colony after the war.
Again, it was still Palestinians living there. Africa, India,
Pakistan, America, Canada, etc, etc were all once British colonies.
What legitimacy do colonial holdings from centuries past have to
do with government today, especially with all that has been said
about self determination?

In other words, I don't think the Palestinians bought into the
"it's British" idea, it was still "theirs". The Western world
may have recognized it as British, but they likely didn't.

And once again, if you owned something, someone else claimed it,
and divided it and told you you could have half simply because
of the force of arms, would you walk away happy?
I don't know where you are politically or economically, but if
you have ever argued that taxes are stealing, or that they are
a government monopoly, unfair and imposed, this is the same
thing.

"That was 50+ years ago. At what point to give up? Would you support Native Americans lobbing mortars into New York from Jersey? Would you support them launching missiles into Detroit from a reservation in Michigan? What's the difference (other than this had always been Indian land)?"

Not much difference. There is also the Irish problem as an excellent
example. I don't know when to give up.

Also, an important distinction. I am *NOT* saying I *support* any of
the above using terrorism. I am saying I *understand* where they are
coming from, how they feel they don't have many other choices on the
matter. Also, recall that in negotiations, you don't get much from a
position of weakness. Reagan and Thatcher both argued that ( correctl

Re:I've read about this before.

[iminplaya]

How does monitoring bits over a wire limit your freedom or prevent you from voting?

Ask Shi Tao, or Li Zhi. Don't think that people aren't being harassed elsewhere. It's just done through traffic stops, or tax audits, etc. Things that don't make the papers.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet they don't bomb Mexico, Canada, Africa, Japan, Russia, etc even though they're all different cultures. You're fooling yourself if you think that our political actions don't put us towards the top of their shitlist.

Indeed some muslims want to kill us all. Does that warrant spending over http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN24507537200710242 TRILLION dollars mostly borrowed from the Chinese to kill them? Our president spends money like a teenager with a credit card, without care for who's going to have to pay it back or the price of interest. That kind of short-sightedness is going to screw us over in the next 30 years.

Re:I've read about this before.

[QuickFox]

Turn their country of origin into a smoking wasteland and make it clear that anyone who follows suite will join them. In other words, since the London bombers were British, let's turn Britain into glass. And since Timothy McVeigh was American, let's turn the US into a vast wasteland of radioactive glass.

Something tells me the British would oppose such a plan. The Americans, on the other hand, are much more bloodthirsty, and also much more act-first-and-think-only-later-(if-at-all). But somehow I think even the Americans would oppose a plan that turns the entire US into glass. You can erode their democracy all you want, but I think even they would react adversely to a plan that would kill them all.

The unpatriotic bastards. They don't realize that for the holy cause of fighting terrorism you have to be ready to accept some sacrifices.

Re:I've read about this before.

[poot_rootbeer]

Some people also don't believe that the Constitution is a suicide pact.

I would rather die than allow the protections guaranteed to us by the Constitution to be stolen from us.

Anybody who would not is a wretched coward.

Re:I've read about this before.

[NoData]

Also, good interview with Mark Klein on NPR's All Things Considered.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16088947&ft=1&f=1
One thing he mentions: The NSA likely has installations like this maybe a dozen of locations around the country.

Re:I've read about this before.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Oh yeah? Go take pictures of important buildings in the middle of the day across town and see if you don't get questioned by the police after a few hours? If it takes you a couple of hours to take pictures of the outside of the building, I would expect the police to pick you up. And give you a breathalizer, a drug test and to check if you were an escapee from the Home For The Easily Bewildered.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Anonymous Coward]

But alas, they don't hate us for our freedom and never have.

So true. In fact, they are now laughing at how easily we give up our freedoms.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Das Modell]

And yet they don't bomb Mexico, Canada, Africa, Japan, Russia, etc even though they're all different cultures. You're fooling yourself if you think that our political actions don't put us towards the top of their shitlist.

America's position does put it at the top of the shitlist, but that doesn't mean that it's only targeted because of its foreign policies.

Islamic fundamentalism is alive and well in Africa, and there's also fundamentalist and terrorist activity in Canada. Islamic fundamentalism is also a problem in Britain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Australia.

Re:I've read about this before.

[badasscat]

Do you understand what an Islamic fundamentalist is? Do you understand that they hate most music, they ban it if they can. They hate women having freedom to choose and do things for themselves. They ban this if they can. Have you heard of honour killings?

Don't be fooled by this 'it's all our fault' mentality folks. There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture, hate 'our freedoms'. And they want to impose their islamic law upon the world. They would kill us if they could.

And again, they only want to kill us because we are killing them.

You need to actually use your head for once and think about the argument you're making here. Your argument is extremely self-centered - it assumes everything a fundamentalist muslim believes is because of us. Well, guess what, there have been fundamentalist muslims in the world since before this country existed. The United States is not the center of the universe.

Why would they hate our music if they didn't have to hear it? What does being against freedom for women have to do with hating the west? (I'm not saying it's right for them to feel that way, but it's their belief - it's got nothing to do with us.) Ditto for "honor killings" - hey, we've got thousands of those every year here in the United States too, they should love us for that. We're practically showing them the way.

The reason they hate us is because we're constantly shoving ourselves down their throats. We don't believe the same things they do but we are forcing both our governmental system and our culture onto them - literally forcing these things onto them through military action if necessary. How would you feel if another country did that to us? Would you love that country?

Your attitude is as pervasive as it is wrong, and it stems from the fact that so few Americans have ever even been off this continent. We think the way we do things is the way everybody does things, and if they don't, they're just backwards and need to be educated. Well, that's not the way the world is. Every country has its own systems, its own culture and its own beliefs, most of which are far older and well-established than ours, and those beliefs may be diametrically opposed to yours without having anything to do with you. In other words, just because a person's beliefs are the opposite of yours does not mean they're reacting against you. Again, this country is far younger than the muslim religion, and there have always been people who interpret its laws strictly. But now, we have given them an enemy. We've handed them a rallying point on a silver platter. It didn't have to be that way; we could have left them alone.

I also find it amazing that nobody who parrots the same line you do ever stops to see the fallacy in the logic. If they hate our freedoms so much, why is our stated goal to eradicate terrorism by forcing those same freedoms on them? (Again, through military action if necessary.) The entire argument makes no sense from any standpoint.

Re:I've read about this before.

[eli pabst]

Bin Laden has actually flat out said on at least 2 tapes that the US could avoid being attacked again if we converted to Islam. You can think whatever you like, but that is straight from the horses mouth.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Das Modell]

Just some stuff I have in my bookmarks.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015804.php
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4006289a12.html
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2007/June/theworld_June713.xml&section=theworld
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22663795-601,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21403909-2,00.html?from=public_rss
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21525531-421,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21785791-421,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22286025-661,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,21359123-661,00.html

Re:I've read about this before.

[zippthorne]

Won't work. We couldn't carry through on that threat. Baghdad sand has too low a silica content.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Nocterro]

They hate us because we've been meddling in their governments, undermining their sovereignty, propping up dictators favorable to us, invading them when those propped up dictators fall out favor, all for our own national self interests.

I know your post is going to get a hundred posts replying "It's not us! It's Islam! They're out to destroy us!" but I'd like to add one more theory:

The western world (and America included, despite dire predictions about it's economy) is much wealthier than the countries the terrorist ideologies come from.

It's that simple. America is wealthy, Americans are wealthy, and they project a culture that shows how wealthy they are. Is it so hard to imagine that to the average Iraqi (only an example, works in Malaysia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, wherever) who is massively poorer than the soldiers and contracters rebuilding his/her country might be a little jealous? And hey, when you're family is starving and someone points out a scapegoat, and promises martyrdom, maybe it doesn't look like such a bad idea.
I'm not saying it's only economic inequality, but if you can take that away people will have more of a commitment to improving their situation than attacking others. When there is genuine hope of gaining something better within the system ideologies that preach destruction and martyrdom will find fewer supporters.

New meaning to the phrase...

[NotQuiteReal]

Come take a drink from the firehose!

Encrypt

[Monstard]

The future of internet is encrypted internet.

Re:Encrypt

[marcop]

No. Why should I? The constitution is clear on this issue. The true answer is impeach those responsible and prosecute At&T. criminally.

Re:Encrypt

[dnormant]

You and GP are right. We have the right to our privacy AND the responsibility to protect ourselves from a crooked government.

Encrypt your data and spank these lawless assholes.

Re:Encrypt

[644bd346996]

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Clear enough? No warrant, no searches or seizures of my stuff. They are particularly prohibited from searching through all of my correspondence without a warrant.

Re:Encrypt

[exley]

That sounds awesome. In theory. But reality doesn't quite match up the idealism you show. What difference does the Constitution make when those in charge have shown quite clearly that they don't give a shit about the Constitution? I all but guarantee you that these guys are gonna get off scot free for all the crap they've pulled.

Re:Encrypt

[neoform]

Who do you think controls the root DNS servers?

If you're using public key encryption, it isn't that much work for telcos to act as an encryption proxy to whomever you're connecting to, which pretty much kills any encryption you're using.

Only true way to stop spying is shared key encryption, which is completely unrealistic for broad use.

Re:Encrypt

[Gorimek]

Criminal law is also very clear on burglary.

That doesn't make it a bad idea to close and lock your front door.

Re:Encrypt

[Bryansix]

Actually just to play Devil's Advocate here you could read that to mean that people's lives should not be disrupted nor should they be kept from their possesions because of a search without a warrant. On the otherhand the way ATT is doing this does not deprive you from the use of the data at all and so would not fall under this part of the Constitution. I'm not saying that this interpretation is right but it could be made.

Re:Encrypt

[Shimmer]

The insufficiency of analogy to more traditional means of communication (postal service in sealed envelopes, telegraph, town crier, word of mouth, whatever) is sufficient demonstration that the constitution is unclear on these matters.

Fine. Have you by any chance ever read the 10th Amendment?

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In other words, if the Constitution is unclear and there is no relevant law then the Federal Govt. has no power whatsoever to intercept our Internet traffic.

Re:Encrypt

[11223]

I'm afraid you do not understand how public key crypto works. If Alice has Bob's key and has personally verified that the signature of the key, communication between Alice and Bob is secure so long as the "hard problem" that the cryptosystem depends on (e.g. discrete log for RSA) is not broken. There is no proxying which can take place; Alice encrypts her traffic with Bob's public key before sending it to him.

Is it possible you've confused public key cryptosystems in general with systems based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange that provide protection against eavesdroppers but not man-in-the-middle attacks?

Re:Encrypt

[neoform]

All digital signatures need to be verified with someone..

If you're the government, how hard do you think it would be to tamper with those signature databases to make them match the man in the middle?

RSA signatures work against your run-of-the-mill hacker, but does not stop telcos/gov from doing this.

Re:Encrypt

[Stanislav_J]

No warrant, no searches or seizures of my stuff. They are particularly prohibited from searching through all of my correspondence without a warrant.

A warrant? That's so 20th Century.....

Re:Encrypt

[Chris Burke]

I'm afraid you do not understand how public key crypto works. If Alice has Bob's key and has personally verified that the signature of the key, communication between Alice and Bob is secure so long as the "hard problem" that the cryptosystem depends on (e.g. discrete log for RSA) is not broken. There is no proxying which can take place; Alice encrypts her traffic with Bob's public key before sending it to him.

The first bold part is what commonly makes the second bold part untrue.

Unless Alice has personally verified that the key she has is in fact Bob's key and vice versa, then she doesn't know for sure that it's Bob's public key that she's using. If Alice just get Bob's public key off the internet itself, then Alice doesn't know that it was Bob Alice was talking too and it may actually be Charlie's public key that she received. If it is in fact Charlie's public key, then Charlie can act as a man-in-the-middle. Alice unknowingly sends a message to Charlie with Charlie's public key, he decrypts it, re-encrypts it with Bob's public key, then sends it on to Bob. Neither will ever know.

People get around this by using certificates which come from a Certificate Authority whom they trust and who verifies that the keys you received are really Bob's keys and not Charlie's. The same problem shows up here, though, since at the point where Alice is communicating with the certificate authority over the internet, the CA is basically Bob and she's in the same boat.

People get around this part of the problem by having the Certificate Authority's keys hard-coded inside their browsers and OSes. There are two problems with this, one general and the other specific. The general problem is that if you get your browser over the internet, once again you can't be sure that the CA's key is really the right key and that the MD5 hash is really the MD5 hash of the unmodified browser. The specific problem is that this whole article is about the government getting telecom companies to cooperate with their spying programs. The Certificate Authority's usually fall into that category, and it would be naive to assume that they haven't handed over to the government their private keys, in which case NSA-Charlie doesn't even need to feed you a fake CA key somehow, he can just flat out pose as CA-Bob.

It is fundamentally impossible to share cryptographic keys securely over an insecure communication network. This is known as "the key exchange problem", and it's really, literally, impossible to fix. The only way to truly be secure when exchanging keys is for Alice and Bob to step outside the insecure network and physically meet in person, and exchange keys and verify that the other person has the correct key.

So if you're really so paranoid that you feel you must encrypt all your communications to keep the government from spying on you, just remember this, and find an off-line way to exchange public keys with everyone you wish to talk to.

Re:Encrypt

[Duhavid]

"However, you could just as plausibly (read: not very plausibly) make an analogy between IP packets and shouting across a crowded room. In that case, anything the gov't hears is fair game"

There is a difference between what the government accidentally hears shouted across
a crowded room, and the government actively seeking to occupy all rooms so that they
can hear every conversation, whispered, shouted or spoken in code.

I would argue that government should not be so seeking without probably cause and a warrant.

Whoa

[yamamushi]

Thats a LOT of porn!

Re:Whoa

[HerrEkberg]

Why did you think the room is locked?

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[Frosty Piss]

I am somehow not convinced... how many TB of data would a major provider like that move in a day? Those would have to be some moby servers...

That it is all forwarded through that secret room doesn't mean that they look at it all. Perhaps they have some algorithm, some system or filter, for determining what they want to look at closer...

Anything about this in AT&T Privacy Statement?

[StefanJ]

You know, those little pamphlets full of fine print that get shoved in your bill and promptly thrown away because they're purposely made to be obscure and hard to read?

If there's no "we allow an obscure government agency look at everything you read, write, say and listen to without court order or accountability" clause, can we sue the fuckers?

Re:Doubtful

[Divide By Zero]

The fact that a thing cannot be done well in a reasonable amount of time within a predetermined budget has never gotten in the way of our government trying to do it anyway.

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[arsheive]

Yes, they would. But this is also the frickin' NSA...

Not to mention that they're only looking at certain type of packets I'd imagine... ignoring streaming video and the like and focusing on email, instant messaging, slashdot posts...

Just because they dont have the space...

[oxpecker]

Just because they dont have the space to store all the data doesn't mean the data isn't being re-directed. They could be sifting through the data for specific ip address's and activity types, and selectivly backing what they want from the whole pile.

It's like some bad Soviet Russia joke...

[Overzeetop]

..but with extra "bad" and no "joke".

it's not stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA didn't take anything, they just copied some bits. The original owners still have their copy so have suffered no loss.

This being slashdot, that should be ok with most folks here.

Olbermann?

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Come on, that Countdown program is just about as biased left as you can get. I guess bias for the liberal side is called news, and bias for conservatives is an outrage, requiring an attack dog like Media Matters. It's a good thing that Fox News exists, or there would be no conservative voices in the media at all.

Re:Olbermann?

[QCompson]

Come on, that Countdown program is just about as biased left as you can get. I guess bias for the liberal side is called news, and bias for conservatives is an outrage, requiring an attack dog like Media Matters. It's a good thing that Fox News exists, or there would be no conservative voices in the media at all.

No kidding. Remember in the run-up to the Iraq war when the Bush administration couldn't get their agenda across to the american people because all the lefty news outlets refused to parrot their claims? Oh wait, that's right. Pretty much 99% of the American media (including the highly "liberal" New York Times) spent the years 2002-2004 mindlessly repeating the administration's talking points without doing any independent reporting.

But still, it's a good thing we have Fox News. Otherwise where would I get all the newest info on my favorite celebrities (what's that silly Paris up to today)? Or how I would know which ethnic/religious/political group to direct my hatred towards?

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[truthsearch]

If only there were some device which could look at each packet that's passed through it and determine where to send it... To route the packets, if you will...

I really don't see what the problem is

[__aailob1448]

The NSA are the good guys, therefore, any traffic monitoring they do will be used to catch the bad guys. Since we are good guys*, we have nothing to fear.

NOTHING!

*Unless you smoke weed, use p2p or jaywalk, in which case you're a bad guy and you deserve to go to jail.

ALL Internet

[mi]

forwards virtually all of its internet traffic

This reminds me of that anecdote from years back about a question asked by a clueless user on how he can "download all of the Internet" at once and take it with him...

Seriously, are we supposed to believe, that "virtually all" of AT&T Internet traffic passes through one facility in San Francisco? It is likely, they have the same rooms in all major nodes, though...

Which brings us back to those earlier laws obliging phone companies to maintain equipment in all central offices, which would allow the government to eavesdrop on anybody's phone calls. Sure, the police needed a warrant to actually perform the eavesdropping. But the equipment and the facilities ("secret rooms") are always there.

What they most likely don't need a warrant for is the statistics — did the number of calls to so-and-so suddenly increase? Did he call such-and-such after this-and-this called him?..

Most likely, NSA is looking for similar things on the Internet — there is a lot of insight to be gained from simply knowing, which sites get more traffic in (possible) correllation with certain events... And then, again, there is a need for the equipment to always be there, so that warranted intercepts of the datastreams can be performed too.

Yes, this is prone to abuse. No, it can not be effectively audited by the public without "compromising" (or even "jeopardizing") "the mission". The only relief comes from the knowledge, that any evidence illegally collected still can not be used against anyone in the court of law...

Re:Anything about this in AT&T Privacy Stateme

[MobyDisk]

We already have.

Re:Pure FUD. Need more information.

[statemachine]

Then read the article. AT&T used optical splitters which means that the NSA got a copy of everything that crossed AT&T.

Oops, I just noticed you were modded flamebait, and rightfully so. FUD applies more to your post than the article.

No shit sherlock ...

[unity100]

After all the bills and executive orders they put through to increase the authority of the president and his office, unwarranted wiretapping stuff, 'enemy combatant' joke, guantanamo, no-fly lists and such, you thought they would leave internet alone ?

Thats bush & co for you. No surprise at&t is the name that comes up with them. after all, its 'for the boyZ', right ?

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[camperdave]

That's true, but what if they only kept a record of the text data? If you strip away all the audio/video content from today's web pages, the resulting data isn't that bad.

I_eot_ne__it
'tr_raarmene
mhewa_lrex_x
_a_anc_oscct
gtiysrorsel.
l_s_miriape
at_tim_sgta
dhnotitte_r

Credentials?!

[yhetti]

I'm not going to claim it's not happening, but this is not the guy to listen to. I don't want to be a dick about this, but he's not a network engineer, he's not a network admin, he's not a data specialist...he's a cable splicer. He does VDV work for AT&T. Is it possible, if not likely, that he maybe doesn't have a complete understanding of how all the tubes work past Layer 1? (And just to really be a dick about it, every VDV person I've met claims to be a data network expert because they lay the wires. Ask one why Ethernet is limited to 100M by spec and watch the fun.)

With only 20 of those facilities, and just in AT&T locations, the fibertaps wouldn't even have a significant percentage of traffic going through them. Do some traceroutes; do some ping tests; Try it from different providers. They would have to be routing all traffic through those points. Your ping times would know, and the global BGP tables would know.

I have a comfortable tinfoil hat. What I *could* be easily convinced of is that the NSA has taps on all oceanic fiber. That's much easier to do, since there's not all that many. And...frankly, they should be. We pay them a lot of money to keep us safe. A *lot* of money. But I don't think this is the guy to listen to regarding something this big and damning.

Re:Credentials?!

[nehumanuscrede]

Considering I WORK for AT&T, I would give him far more credit than any engineer
or planner this company employs. They are engineers in title only. If you want
to know how things work within a Central Office, go ask the folks who work in it.
They have far better insight than the planners do.

The ONLY other possible explanation for having a room full of equipment locked up
would be a co-located company. It's not uncommon for other carriers to have
equipment in the office that's unaccessible to AT&T and vice versa.

However, none of them require a government clearance to gain entry. Just a
simple key. Nor are they usually hidden from view. They simply put up wire cages
to restrict access to the rooms in question.

All it will take is an audit of the fibers in question and the splitters. If the
splitters actually exist on the backbone fibers and they route into that room, then
AT&T will have some explaining to do. Simple as that.

The theory I've kicked around is this type of equipment will have a specific eqpt
code in the databases AT&T uses. ( Assuming it's inventoried at all. Though the
word document produced indicates that it might be ) Shouldn't be all that tough to run
an eqpt scan against a Central Office CLLI code to see if it shows up in the
inventory. . . .

Just a theory mind you ;)

Now as to the percentage of the internet comment I saw earlier.

Do you actually believe this is the ONLY office this type of setup is installed in ?
Please. If this gear is what we all think it is, then the major Toll buildings
( read that the major hubs ) will likely ALL have this gear installed in it. It's
just a matter of figuring out which offices have been compromised. Probably easy to
spot. Find the biggest serving office in any given city and start your search there.

It's also doubtful they are saving the Internet in real time. It's more than likely
a scan and flag type setup. It's likely not even done on site. It's far more probable
that the redirected traffic is shipped out another fiber that is directly connected to
an NSA office in the region.

For the encryption comment:

The day we start encrypting everything on the net will be the day you see the bills
popping back up to keep those ' terrorist tools ' out of the hands of the average
citizen.

Not as Hard as You Think

[twifosp]

To all the posters saying this would be too difficult to monitor and analyze:

No it wouldn't. It's called sampling. Red flags and segmenting certain layers and patterns. You don't have to store a fraction of the traffic data to analyze it and store what you need.

I won't say what I do, but I do it for a fortune 50 company, and I personally analyze an obscene amount of internet traffic. I do all this with a few servers and a workstation. Now I can honestly I say I have probably analyzed .5% of the internet's traffic (doesn't sound like much, but it is). With the differnet software we use and the relatively small amounts of hardware we use, I can easily imagine scaling that to 100% without too much problems. You'd need a lot more people, better alogorithms, and much more processing and storage space. But it's definitely possible.

And you don't even need to do 100%. As I pointed out before, you can segment your data and sample it for what you are looking for. Or data mine samples if you don't know what you are looking for. Find the flags you want, and apply that accross the whole traffic spectrum.

Pretty scary. Allthough my first thought is that this is used for counter-terrorism activities, I can't help but think that's instead used for political purposes as well. Who knows. Big brother indeed.

Are you saying Bush faked his Guard documents?

[nunyadambinness]

"The Bush camp has done this kind of thing before"

It seems upon first reading that you're claiming the Bush camp faked the documents that Rather lost his career over.

Did I misread you?

And if not,could you please source that? Your link doesn't address it at all. I haven't heard that accusation before, and would like to see something to support it.

Re:Shameful

[Stanislav_J]

The NSA does not care about monitoring geeks in their Mom's basement.

Except maybe on breaks, when they need a good laugh...

AT&T is not the only stooge, we are also

[Tiger Smile]

The American public and media will react to the lack of sexiness in this story with the kind of outrage you might express when you see a long line at the grocery store checkout. Americans will sit on their increasing asses and watch it all happen, and unlike the frog in the beaker, American will turn up the heat all on their own. You only need to utter the nine from 9/11 and they scream "How much can I give you to feel safe again!?" (I borrowed that from Family Guy)

In any case, stop you damned moaning?! This story is false because it fails to ask you what the f**k you are going to do about it? If nothing you are the problem! I'm going to do the norm. Write a litter. How that hell is this the "Home of the free?" Were monitored more than a Jewish school in Germany in the 1930's. Okay, Hitler was bad, and he was worse than this, but he sure would have thought it a damned nice item.

I'm not even going to insult you by listing all we've lost in freedoms. That would be whining. Lost. That sure as hell is the wrong word. we gave away freedoms like offerings to a pagan god(and not one of the cool ones). We burned them by the bushel. Can you buy a house without showing ID? How easy is it to wire funds. Oh, we'll catch a few, but we'll have to except being tracked watched and ID'ed any time we want to do something.

All that, rather than solving the problem. All the fuss. All the paranoia. All the tracking, monitoring, and so on. It's got the be the biggest sexual fetish for the inner fascist bubbling to the surface of America.

Do something to stop it, or I'm pointing at you and saying "You are all for it. You are fascism's little cheerleader, By saying nothing. You did this."

whoes talking about stealing?

[crabpeople]

A music or movie is widely broadcast, that is the point of it, to tell a story. If an artist wants to let no one hear his song, locks it in a vault, and it gets shared, then thats wrong. But if an artist is producing music to be heard, then they have no right to privacy in regards to that song now do they?

You are somehow confusing the right to privacy with disseminating other peoples already released intelectual property. The issues are not even remotely similar. Of course this being slashdot, you have been wildly and incorrectly modded up.

Charming

[spun]

What an appropriate sig. "I hurt people for fun." Charming. You may be a psychopath, but at least you're honest about it. As reprehensible as "Turn their [terrorists] country of origin into a smoking wasteland" is, the more important point is that it just won't accomplish what you think it will. What it would accomplish is to unite the entire world against us. We would be the ones obliterated. But, as you hurt people for fun, I'm sure you'd find any outcome featuring enough hurt people enjoyable.

Yawn

[The Master Control P]

Everyone is up in arms because a PRIVATE shipping company is opening and xeroxing every document that passes through it's PRIVATE distribution network and forwarding the xerox to the government.

I mean, so what that it's basically impossible to avoid either using Bizzaro-FedEx or have them handle your document at some point, they're a MONOPOLY CORPORATION and not the government, so that magically makes it moral and legal *coughfruit of a poisoned treecough* for them to help the government spy on you by proxy.

Can I have some of the peyote they're putting in your koolaid?

Culture warior...

[WallaceAndGromit]

There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture...

What, like this one?

Re:Culture warior...

[Das Modell]

Yes, O'Reilly is clearly far more dangerous than the global Jihad.

Re:Culture warior...

[uhlume]

Or this one? (Pat Robertson)

Re:Culture warior...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Yes, O'Reilly is clearly far more dangerous than the global Jihad.

Well, actually, yes.

You see, all of the jihad is based on demagougery exploiting various, mostly unrelated, real or imagined grievances in the Arab world, and aims at creation of violence and warfare towards all and any comers who are unlike the target audience via indoctrination, lies, manipulation of facts etc and so on. At the forefront of the movement are loudmouth morons who spew constant stream of anti-everything-non-fundamentalist-Islam invective and rouse various sociopaths to action, mostly via small arms warfare combined with improvised explosives, punctuated by suicidal bomb attacks and a very rare spectacular terrorist assault on foreign soil, which results in few thousand casualties per year on average.

On the other hand we have demagougery exploiting various, mostly unrelated, real or imagined grievances in of the xenophobic, supremacist white subsectuion of American society, which aims at creation of violence and warfare towards all and any comers who are unlike the target audience via indoctrination, lies, manipulation of facts etc and so on. At the forefront of the movement are loudmouth morons who spew constant stream of anti-everything-non-white-upper-class-Christainst invective and rouse various sociopaths to action, mostly via large scale warfare, aerial bombardment and wholesale occupation of foreign nations, exctrajudicial imprisonment in Gulags, torture etc, with hundreds of thousands of casualties in Iraq alone in a period of 4 years.

In other words, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin etc are the ideological equivalents of Osama and various pontificating radical Imams in their various Madrassas. The difference is that their spew is empirically proven to be capable of causing vastly more damage and casualties than that of all the modern jihadis combined so far.

Perheaps that will change when the Pakistani nukes change hands to Taliban or Al-Queda and O'Reilly and Osama will start competing on more even terms.

None of which of course helps the more sane part of the humanity which is likely to caught in the crossfire caused by the blowhard morons of the world.

My dream is that one day all of the most insane of the violence promoting demagouges like O'Reilley, Coulter and Osama are all caught, given flamethrowers or some such and sent to an uninhabited island to practice what they preach on each other, while the rest of the world goes on about making our lives better. The last one standing gets to own the island where his followers are all sent as a punishment to listen to his or her whining 24/7 for the rest of their short lives.

Re:Culture warior...

[IgnoramusMaximus]

If you think O'Reilly, Coulter and Malkin (what is she even doing on this list?) are just as dangerous as the global Jihad,

I have plain as day, empirical evidence to prove it: the "global jihad" is equipped with AK-47s, RPGs, some stolen explosives and what seems like an infinite supply of suicidal idiots. People whom O'Reilly, Coulter and Malkin (she substituted for O'Reilly on FOX) are in a position to influence control the most advanced army humanity ever constructed, complete with nuke tipped ICBMs, aircraft carriers and the like. The "global jihad" managed, after 20 years of plotting, to kill 3000 US citizens on US soil employing the apex of the most advanced of Al-Queda's weapons technologies: 19 pairs of box cutters. The followers of O'Reilly have invaded whole nations and killed hundreds of thousands of their citizens, leveled whole cities and drove millions of refugees out of their homes using armored divisions, aerial bombardment and attack helicopters.

There is just no contest.

you are either severely delusional

Simple empirical observation, see above.

or a fanatical adherent of the theory of universal moral equivalence which states that everything in the universe is always perfectly balanced so that you never have to have a real opinion on anything

Morality?! Both sides in this conflict are deeply immoral, corrupt, dishonest, manipulative, vicious, callous to the human consequences of their actions, and thoroughly vile. One wishes to dominate the world via a barbaric, brainless medieval religious doctrine, the other wants to dominate the world via armies and a corrupt political/economic system aimed at enriching the aristocracy of Corporate America and also does not shy away from utilizing their own medieval religious doctrines as it suits them and their Israeli accomplices. There is no good guys in this fight, other then perheaps some few poor non-sectarian Iraqis who only want to get on with their lives and are being killed, maimed, herded and abused by all sides.

Christians are just as evil as Muslims

You ooze your religious biggotry. What does this nonsensical satement mean?! As "evil" as Muslims? You mean they conducted Crusades and skinned people alive during the Spanish Inquisition? Burned scientists on the stake? Do explain.

I have news for you: all fundamentalist wackos, irrespective of the type of their mental disease are evil. With no exception. They will try to subjegate, and failing that maim and murder anyone who is actively resisting their particular woo-woism. Christians did it, and are actively doing it (see Iraq) and so do Muslims, Jews and many others. Religions are the scourge of civilization. If it weren't for the secular Enlightenment the Catholics would be still spilling the guts of children of Lutherans who would be still spilling the guts of Calvinists and Baptists would be still gutting the children of Catholics and vice versa. And so now the medieval darkness is returning again, and vicious crazies are at each-other's throats again until some adults step in, hopefuly before the Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious lunatics blow the planet apart.

the Quran and Bible are carbon copies of each other

Thay are different flavours of equally irrational and hateful ravings full of vindictive, vicious, violent acts by their respective make-believe invisible old-men-in-the-sky and even more vicious followers of those sick fantasies, both demanding irrational behaviours from their victims and both utterly incompatible with any rational, advanced civilization. Both should have stayed behind where they belong: medieval dark ages.

Saudi Arabia is just as bad as the US

I am sure the billionaire princes within would disagree.

George W. Bush is just like Hitler

Re:Shameful

[soren100]

It is already a totalitarianism state, you don't have to wait for it.

Your words are, frankly, insulting to the millions of individuals who lost their liberty, lives, property, and loved ones in REAL totalitarian states. Read the Gulag Archipelago sometime and get informed. The problem is, that the REAL totalitarian states never just appear fully formed. They go through stages. Germany before WWI had a constitution and elected its leaders in a democratic (or at least Republican, to be more correct) fashion. There were no gas chambers then.

Another example is that the Jews were forced to wear the yellow "star of david" on their clothes in 1938. If they were to complain about the regulations and say that they were living in a "police state", then by your logic they could easily be ridiculed because the concentration camps such as Auschwitz had not been built yet -- construction on those started in 1940. By your logic the star of david is just a patch on a coat, nothing to be worried about, right? So by your words and logic they would be "frankly, insulting" their future selves who would be dying in the gas chambers two years later.

The problem with your logic is that you are saying that a person cannot complain about the totalitarian nature of his country until he can be killed for just complaining about the totalitarian nature of his country -- a "catch 22".

America is definitely becoming less and less free every day and more authoritarian -- that is very easy to see. The right of privacy is guaranteed by our constitution, and when it is public knowledge that our government is publicly ignoring that constitution that is definitely the time to complain. Our constitution was created to protect us from our government and when our government starts treating it like toilet paper it is time definitely time to do something.

I honestly think you feel good about yourself through pretending you live in a totalitarian state for the same reason that Christians enjoy hearing stories about "persecuted Christians" in third-world hell holes. It is illegal for the government to do domestic warrantless wiretapping, yet they admit that they are doing it. It is illegal for the government to torture people, yet they admit they are doing it. It is illegal for the government to deny people their judicial due process by taking people to secret prisons in foreign countries, but they admit they are doing it. Anyone who does not understand that American rights and freedoms, like the right to privacy and t are disappearing has their head in the sand.

America is no longer the "land of the free and home of the brave" and it is very much high time for everyone to start recognizing that fact and start speaking up. Trying to say that our government is not repressive enough or authoritarian enough to speak up about it is ridiculous. The people who were tortured and killed at Abu Ghraib and other places at the hands of our government would not find those words "frankly, insulting". They would say that those words are an understatement.

When people in America joke on a regular basis that if you say anything against the government that you might be sent to Guantanamo, and when our elected officials argue about whether or not repeatedly drowning someone and reviving them is torture, you can be pretty sure that we have crossed the line that divides a free state and an authoritarian state.

Oh Come On, People!

[Greyfox]

The NSA has implemented what has GOT to be the BIGGEST PORN GATHERING SYSTEM OF ALL TIME, and all we can do is bitch and moan about how our rights are being infringed? We should be hitting the agents at our nearest branch office up for copies! Hey secret agent man, I got 4 empty 1tb drives here, how about topping me off? Aww yea, me likey teh nasty!

I am SO never getting a job with those guys...

Obligatory....

[Anonymous Coward]

NSA monitors internet in America? In New Soviet America, internet monitors YOU.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Thought you had it for a second

[ChunderDownunder]

Indeed, plenty of 'Christian' nations denounce US foreign policy too.

Has John Pilger's excellent propaganda film The War on Democracy shown in the US yet?

Re:Thought you had it for a second

[zippthorne]

We meddled in Vietnam, too, and badly. But you don't see Vietnamese crashing planes into our buildings and blowing up random civilians and embassies. In fact, last I checked, we're on not-that-crappy terms with them. I doubt they'll ever love us, but they don't seem to have any problem with being one of our trading partners.

I'm curious, also, as to how we offended the Barbary Pirates to make them capture our cargoes and ransom or impress our sailors.

There's definitely more to it than our meddling.

Re:Thought you had it for a second

[Sergeant Pepper]

Have you read any of the Qur'an?

Methinks not. You're going around telling people to read it when you probably don't even own one. There's a special word in there for Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and other religions similar to Islam. It's "dhimmi", which means People of the Book. The Qur'an says that Muslims should "not dispute with the Followers of the Book...except of those of them who act unjustly". It says that "[Muslims] believe in that which has been revealed to [them] and revealed to [the dhimmis], and [their] God and [the dhimmi's] God is One, and to Him do [they] submit."

The People of the Book were granted very similar rights to Muslims. Muslims were not told "to convert [them], subjugate [them], or KILL [them]. PERIOD."

You're wrong. I fear for the human race based on the lies sheeple like you are willing to believe. I have a bad feeling that you were homeschooled.

Re:Thought you had it for a second

[Spy der Mann]

Wow, so all these countries are just super-cool with the fact that their leaders are puppets and their country is riddled with US military bases?

And don't forget Pinochet. The US has been trying to control all the world: Vietnam, middle east, South America, Cuba, etc. Is it wrong that the US has gained enemies ALL AROUND THE WORLD?

ZOMG, the terrorists want to kill us all!!!!111one
Gee, I wonder why...