Slashdot Mirror
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."
Definetly sounding more and more like 1984 every day... with people opening up their mouths for a taste of frosty piss from the government for first posts.
Wheres all that small government talk now?
We are shocked. SHOCKED! That the US Government is SPYING on citizens and foreign governments with the assistance of telecoms and leading Internet companies.
US Congressmen are shocked. SHOCKED!
European officials are shocked. SHOCKED!
Slashdot, reddit and cool kids sites are shocked. SHOCKED!
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and not so cool not-kids are shocked. SHOCKED!
Newspapers and universities are shocked. SHOCKED!
My God what's next... that US businesses might be selling their customer's buying and usage histories to other businesses?
As if anyone didn't think this was going on?
There is a huge danger in the "we already knew they did this" thinking you see posted everywhere.
We already had suspicions, and very well founded ones considering AT&T's NSA room, but the information we are getting is different. It has confirmed beyond any doubt those suspicions are true and those who believed them not foil hatters. Why is this important? Because if we do nothing in the face of absolute confirmation, it means that the DC pukes will know they have mandate to do all this and more.
So quit being complacent "I told you so" time wasters, and get down to working for change. This is quite seriously, a "now or never" moment.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
What are you going to do about it?
This casts a new light on Facebook, Google and Microsoft executives' denials of the NSA having "direct access" to their servers. Maybe the executives are not cleared to know what their tech staffs are doing, and the tech staffs are gagged from telling them. This won't kill the Cloud for users (many value convenience over privacy) but for anyone with confidential information, or entrusted with the private information of others - they don't know who they can really trust and what their liability will be.
People don't enjoy feeling duped. It's psychologically easier to believe that you knew this all along and you are not surprised.
If they treat us citizens of the EU as potential enemies who can be legally spied upon, I consider it a crime if the EU official co-operates with the US. A crime against me, as one of their voter, who are the only party that gives them any kind of power.
You find the answer to that, you might reconsider 1 of your options.
This kinda sounds like it to me.
... Power wants to be concentrated.
It seems to me that as the powers of technology increase, the concentration of that power also increases. Someone will need to own those drones. Someone will need to own those routers, and backbones. Then as power is concentrated, we will reach a level of technology where power is so concentrated in so few hands that utter slavery for all is inevitable.
There's at least one US cellular provider which annoys the FBI by obeying the law. They have a contact point for interception requests. That phone is answered by their lawyers, who check the validity of the request before anything happens. If it's an "emergency" request prior to a court order, they insist that the requesting law enforcement agent sign a form.
The form requires full identification of the law enforcement officer, their contact information, and their supervisor's contact information. The officer must certify that a proper court order will be requested and provided to the telco within a specified number of days. The law enforcement officer has to agree that their agency will indemnify the telco in the event of any later legal dispute, and that should the agency fail to do so, the officer will be personally responsible for any penalties or legal expenses incurred by the telco.
That's what CALEA says a telco is supposed to do. The FBI hates being accountable like that.
More added to the snowball that Edward Snowden started rolling. I accept that a certain amount of targetted monitoring is needed, but what we are being shown is on a different scale. What really annoys me is how the politicians have lied and told us that we should not worry our silly little heads. Now is the time to hold the politicians to account -- not accept the ''I will not discuss operations'' answers that they fob us off with. Time for honesty and heads to roll.
It will be interesting to see how much attention the mainstream media pay to this or if they will try to bury it.
Dude, why so surprised? You read it here first:
http://dictatorshandbook.net/book/node237.html
From the dictator's handbook, chapter nine:
You own the hardware. Internet access passes through the infrastructure of your state-owned telecommunications systems, or at least the infrastructure of private telecoms that depend on your goodwill for their existence and continued operations. As such, you have a high degree of control over what information enters and exits your national territory. The Chinese have proven you can safely filter out âoeharmfulâ information from the outside without stifling economic activity.[180]
You control the purse-strings. The Internet is run by corporations, and corporations are most influenced by economic, not political considerations. Google was forced out of China by economics, not human rights concerns; both Twitter and Facebook have refused to join the Global Network Initiative (an organization focused on the right to expression and privacy). Research in Motion (RIM) offered access to its otherwise encrypted and protected messaging servers as soon as Bahrain asked for them, prompting other nations to do the same.9.1
No better resource than the Internet has ever existed with which an individualâ(TM)s life and movements can be tracked via their cyber footprints by any curious autocrat. Imperial Russiaâ(TM)s Okhrana, the East German Stasi, and the Soviet KGB: each was feared for its ability to track and monitor its prey. But they would be astonished with how much easier technology has made their work.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Look, every country that has the ability to spy, spies. Every country that has the ability to spy at a given level, does so. You will notice that every single country that has condemned the US for the NSA's actions has been a country that is a technological backwater. You will notice that every single country that is technological advanced at a given level has not condemned the US. This is not a coincidence.
The simple fact of the matter is that the worlds governments all spy on each others citizens and are all perfectly capable of breeding their own Edward Snowden. Disenfranchisement can happen with any government in any point in history. Governments know it and they don't want to encourage their own Snowden's. What he has to say really isn't that earth shattering, the political ramifications aren't worth it and frankly they have their own spying to hide.
No government is going to stop spying, who the hell wants to be caught with their pants down for the next 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Blitzkrieg, etc....
Call them what they are, which is blatantly criminal international espionage of a US-commanded global police state that is totally out of control.
And the European spooks need some severe internal investigations to determine how they managed to so blindly compromise the sovereignty of their respective countries.
Because barcodes on the wrist is so WWII, and 1940's ish...
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement saying that legally authorized data collection "has been one of our most important tools for the protection of the nationâ(TM)s - and our alliesâ(TM) - security. Our use of these authorities has been properly classified to maximize the potential for effective collection against foreign terrorists and other adversaries. "
That's it. Commercial and political purposes.
..reveals some upcoming /. titles:
US spies on non-US citizens
Western countries spy on US citizens
Western countries spy on Western citizens
Western countries spy on non-Western citizens
Non-Western countries spy on US citizens
Non-Western countries spy on Western citizens
Non-Western countries spy on non-Western citizens
US spies share information with Western spies
US spies share information with non-Western spies
Western spies share information with non-Western spies
US spies on US social networking
US spies on non-US social networking
non-US countries spy on US social networking
non-US countries spy on non-US social networking
All of these articles will spark in depth discussions about the rights of government, the rights of citizens, violations of such rights, heroes vs non-heroes, which countries have greener grass, and at the end it will be concluded that most people don't give a shit.
Whining that for some people it is "confirmed information" is useless. The whole point of Greenwald/Snowden campaign is to provide this "confirmed information" to the masses and make masses angry enough to force some change on behalf of government (and its corporate masters). This is the battlefield and TPTBs are perfectly aware of that. So you have information blackouts in various places (eg. filtering The Guardian site for US military personel, or W. Hague issuing publication ban for UK media using some "national security" as a pretext). Whining and trolling about "confirmed information" (a.k.a "nothing to see here") is clear indication of AC being either government/corporate stooge or uninformed citizen having his brain washed by government/corporate propaganda. IF you have heart at the right side, you should pass those "confirmed information" to as many people as you can, regardless of how long did you know about this.
I've been telling you for years, "it's The Phone Company that controls the government and all major corporations." What other entity has such access to all information and virtually all transactions, This was exposed nearly 45 years ago in a supposedly spoof film "The President's Analyst"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_President%27s_Analyst) . It is not the government (governments) that are controlling the so called 'phone companies' it is the "Phone Company" that controls the governments. It is not many independent telcos, it is one entity, totally interconnected over the globe. It could very well be the nascent formation of "The Singularity". Be ready to bend over and kiss your monkey ass goodbye.
thing for the you can. When the HAppiness% Another
Duuuuhhh. . . last we checked, most those "foreign telecoms" were owned by private equity/leveraged buyout firms such as Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, et al. Of course, the banksters (private equity category) who have long been the Wall Street overseers of the Financial-Intelligence-Complex will control the global telecommunications, as they control the global news, etc.
Should be rather obvious by this time. . .
Metro pcs
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Link
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Not being shocked does not give anyone the right to shit on the constitution.
You're a fucking fagot who is trivializing a very very important issue. I hope you and your family are the first to die when the revolution comes.
then they cut their own throat buy losig funding. Image if weed bacame legal, the DEA would lose 10'0's of millions in funding and someone's bonuses would disapear.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Any telecom who wants to claim to provide security cannot have any US office, branch, subsidiary head office or holding company in the US or any part of its empire.
Happily, this will still leave them 95% of the planet to do business on. A small sacrifice to ensure acceptable practice.
The flip side of this is that any provider that is vulnerable to illegal actions from US spooks cannot reliably claim to have any security. And all this is before they start to consider their own legal system.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Another example of ignorance & stupidity. Telecoms operate by govt license. They have to fulfill tender requirements, one of which has - for a long time - been the ability to monitor comms. If you don't like that, don't use their infrastructure. This isn't merely the US but is a standard practice all over the world, with all eqpt. manufacturers. You can count on on Huaiwei, ZTE and other chinese makes to be also calling home....cheap comes at a price.
Nevermind ...
In the late fall of 2000 I purchased Global Crossing shares, a total price of about $2 thousand dollars.
A very small bet !
And with reason.
Over the next 24 months I watched the stock price plummet.
Then it went below $1 per share.
I still watched.
Then it was delisted.
Some months later I receive packets of forms: a Class Action Suite Against Global Crossing and its 'Officers.'
Then more packages; this time from the 'settlement.' My small bet of $2000, if I wanted to go forward with the class action, would be worth $0.25 to $1.50.
I did not bother to respond.
Now, we learn that a Federal Government committee, Team Telecom, was in collusion with the Offices of Global Crossing and the FCC to defraud the investors of their money in order to void the $12 billion in debt, after the fact.
National Security? NO. Just MONEY!
At this point in time, arguing anything with Obama is like walking into Hitler's Office and informing him that people are being indiscriminately killed at Auschwitz. He would not even look up from his writing to say, "you can find the door ... can't you."
Fuck Obama
Why is a system like this in place? Clearly its not the stop crime as crime rates dont reflect any noticable benefit, they have mostly remained constant for years (per capita). I would like to see what benefits this has brought to any country, basically justfying such a program.
At least this isn't another story about China hacking us, putting backdoors into everything, stealing nuclear secrets, etc etc etc while the US appears to have zero technical abilities whatsoever. It turns out we're just better at hiding stuff like that. I find it extremely comforting and somewhat unsurprising really. Us hacking stuff, spying on stuff with backdoors, etc really evens the odds in cyber war and it was there all along.
Pandora's box has been opened from the perspective of the spooks. Nothing will ever happen to stop these surveillance tactics, it is next to impossible politically to have these tools retracted. Sad but true.
http://bit.ly/1aRQUfJ
slashdot could start using SSL.
I know it's a crazy thought, but what if one of the most popular sites discussing this global eavesdropping of all communication would get its act together and start using crypto.
It's 2013. SSL was first published in 1995.
Yet, the numbers go against the belief that violence is the solution to anything.
Quite the contrary, non-violence seems more effective at getting real change established:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/the-more-violence-the-less-revolution/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_revolution
Like most non US people, we will happily watch the great entertainment that is the US.
They are an amusing bunch and actually seeing the 'decline and fall' of an empire played out in front of you rather then reading about it in a history book is great. Let them keep their bread and circus and lets focus on who will replace them. And as for Snowden, good luck to him. My major critism is that as a sys admin he was aware of unlocked usb ports and never tried to fix it.
So keep on as you are US you are the best reality show going.
.... but in a different category:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/banks-now-outbidding-private-equity-funds-at-foreclosures-either-believing-they-can-beat-them-at-the-pump-and-dump-game-or-deferring-losses.html
Attempt to read and comprehend the above article (I know, reading is sooooo hard, like arithmetic). sgt_doom
"Negotiating leverage has come from a seemingly mundane government power: the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to approve cable licenses. "
Otherwise known as extortion, which is a crime.
Well, one crime begets another...