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US Spies Have "Security Agreements" With Foreign Telecoms
McGruber writes "The Washington Post is reporting the existence of 'Team Telecom', lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, who ensure that Global Crossing and other foreign-owned telecoms, quickly and confidentially fulfill the USA's surveillance requests. Team Telecom leverages the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve cable licenses. The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a 'Network Operations Center' on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company's executives and directors. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment for the Washington Post's article."
As one of the "already knew this" folks, what's been revealed is not nearly half of what you are asserting and is generally undermining our past ideas of what we already knew.
What we knew: The NSA had splitters in the MAEs and was copying everything and performing deep packet inspection. Also, anybody can ask any business for copies of their business records, government agents included.
What we have learned in the past month: A judge ordered Verizon to give the NSA a copy of metadata that is not considered private information in Supreme Court precedent (Smith v. Maryland, 1979). The NSA asks businesses to have procedures in place to provide data in a useable format upon request or receipt of a warrant. Businesses regularly push back against the NSA's requests for warrantless access, and the NSA will come back with a warrant if they really want the data. The NSA's procedures for accessing data are tied up by red tape to ensure that they don't accidentally (or intentionally) infringe on personal privacy without a just and lawful cause.
What you are asserting: The NSA is listening in on everyone's phone calls. The NSA is reading everyone's mail all the time. The NSA has a probe in everyone's ass to see what they ate for breakfast. There are no legal differences between a warrantless search and a search for which a search warrant was acquired. The federal government's Constitutional authority to track anything entering or exiting the borders does not exist. The Constitution is what you say it is. The Supreme Court precedent does not exist. The Supreme Court does not exist. Ignore all details and speak only in absolute generalities.