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."

Comments

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yep

[memnock]

With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.

Large criminal organizations use the same tactics as large legal organizations, i.e. they bribe the relevant people and insert collaborators for leniency and favorable treatment.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity.

Even if that were true -- and there have been way too many dubious cases now to believe that without qualification -- it would only apply today. A lot of the danger in these systems is not how they are used right now, it is how they might be used by someone we haven't even identified yet who's running the show in 5 or 10 or 50 years.

If you think that it could never happen, may I remind you that just months ago, shortly after the Boston bombing, several prominent US politicians including a man who ran for President stated publicly and unambiguously that the surviving suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant and thus excluded from the normal rules of due process. Given that he was suspected of murder, a crime that can still carry the death penalty in the US but normally does not in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that's a particularly disturbing footnote to an already tragic event.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, cool. So instead of building a huge expensive Orwellian surveillance apparatus to catch criminals that actually exist and have an impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, the whole thing is aimed at the imaginary boogeyman that kills fewer people per year than lightning.

That makes it so much better. It's not a benevolent dictatorship trying to make a utopia, it's a fascist police state trying to keep itself in power. Thanks for clearing that up for us.

Re:Yep

[s.petry]

Let me show you how broken your thinking is. Here is what you quoted as this thing that requires the Governments to spy everyone. which resulted in 71,803 people killed, wounded, or kidnapped in 2007.

According to this, let us compare to alcohol which is perfectly legal to people of age, and does not require intrusive spying on everyone by Governments. These stats are 2004 so it would be safe to assume that increased population increases these numbers, while "terrorism" is fluctuates massively. For example, in your link the amount of people impacted has gone down annually (which is often due to how they fudge numbers to make things look really really bad). I"m not even touching illegal narcotics which would beat the pants off of these numbers.

Cirrhosis: 372,995 deaths.

Traffic accidents: 268,246

You can read the report yourself, but the point is that the net alcohol related deaths were 2,249,852. So over 30 times the deaths occurred, and it does not mean that we should be spying on everyone.

Real numbers, you have a .00003 percent chance of being killed by a drunk, compared to a .000001 percent chance of being impacted by a terrorist (death, kidnapping, wounding). Pay attention to that, it's dead vs. impacted.

Do you see how broken your logic is, to deem it's okay to spy on people based on some raw numbers? Save the straw man or red herring about how safe the spying keeps us, it's bullshit. Boston is proof that the massive spying on you and I does not make a difference. Save your next fallacy about inept or incompetent people managing the data, it does not change because that is not the point of their spying.

Reality check! More people in the US have been killed annually by appliances falling on them than by terrorists! Here is a fun link for you.

Pay attention and read some history. In every case where people have allowed Governments to abuse their rights and privacy in order to protect them, it has turned out very very badly for that society. Every time, not most of the time. This is why Jefferson stated "Those willing to trade liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security." You should know better, but you are brain washed into believing that it can't happen to you.

Either that, or you are paid to spread propaganda like you just did.

To summarize

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Actually Protest This Shit

[anagama]

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.

Re:Actually Protest This Shit

[Vintermann]

Most of the "they already knew this" folks would have called you paranoid if you asserted half of what's been revealed. It's a thin attempt to justify their complacent attitudes, in the face of evidence that radical attitudes were called for all along.

And hopefully, I'm not going to be called paranoid now when I assert that the government has a social media strategy, and that they know how to play on people's vanities in order to manufacture consent.

Re:Actually Protest This Shit

[cultiv8]

So Restore the Fourth and Fight for the Future. Attend rallies like this one last week, support privacy advocates, sign the petition to shut down the NSA Utah data center, or hell the petition to pardon Snowden.

Re:Actually Protest This Shit

[anagama]

Yeah, the Seattle restorethe4th rally was scheduled for July 6 at noon at Westlake Center/Park. It was about 80 degrees yesterday, and not a cloud in the sky.

I showed up after driving for an hour and half, walked around in circles looking for the protest. I saw three cop cars, three ambulances, a dozen cops, and a Jesus Freak with a sign asking "what does Jesus mean to you".

I didn't break out my sign -- I figured it would be bad PR to have a protest only as big as Jesus Freaks could muster, because that makes the issue easily dismissed, ignored, and made fun of.

Posting web pages and not doing anything ... is not fucking doing anything. It is unbelievable to me that Anonymous can organize large protests against the CoS, a group that harms a tiny fraction of the world's population, but Seattle can't get 10 people to show up to protest an issue that threatens almost every person on the planet. That's fucking appalling.

Re:Actually Protest This Shit

[Anachragnome]

My wife and I have a rule that we began applying last election cycle. If there is any doubt about a particular race that we are voting on (after doing research on each candidate, of course), we apply a simple formula--vote the incumbent out.

Re:Actually Protest This Shit

[fufufang]

As just one thing, vow that you will not vote for any candidate who does not support a full and complete pardon for Snowden. Even if you think your candidate is a "lesser evil" -- all that has gotten us is whole bunch of evil. Make the politicians fear for their jobs.

And you shouldn't be afraid of voting a third-party candidate. Candidates in the Republican/Democrat parties do respond to those third-parties, if the race between the is close, as they want to get as many votes as they can.

Re:As if

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to assume it's going on, it's another thing to actually find proof it's going on.

Just like you assume your parents had nasty, disgusting sex to conceive you, and that's fine. But it's totally another thing to see the old home porno vhs tapes of them humping and grunting and confirming all your suspicions.

Does Zuckerberg really know?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Confirmed information is useless

[LordThyGod]

What are you going to do about it?

Cry. In my beer. We are fucked. Might as well find a way to relax and enjoy those deep, rhythmic thrusts. Its military industrial complex on steroids. As long as there is big money involved, and all 3 branches of govt are complicit, and the govt is run by big money, there is no hope. The chance of a sea change in the US electorate that gives a shit and might effect some meaningful change, is slim to none.

Proper compliance

[Animats]

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.

Straight out of the Dictator's Handbook

[water-and-sewer]

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.

Re:As if

[jythie]

That has to be the most disturbingly accurate analogy I have heard yet...

Re:As if

[king neckbeard]

He, there is still time. In fact, the longer you wait, the more disgusting it will be.

This appears close to the description

[SpaceLifeForm]

Metro pcs