Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache have put together a fascinating pair of stories for News.com that outline what the NSA’s domestic spying program might look like. Part one surveyed telecom companies, to find out which ones cooperated with the spooks. Part two sketches out how the NSA might be able to listen in. A few excerpts are below. But do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
99 percent of the world’s long-distance communications travel through [undersea] fiber links… It’s easiest to tap those underwater cables when they make landfall instead of trying to do it underwater, analysts say.
“The easiest thing to do would be to somehow get an agreement with a provider and just simply co-exist in a building, one of the main fiber stations, (peering) points or whatever. In other words, work out something with either a long-haul provider or with an employee.” …
Phill Shade, a network engineer for WildPackets who is the company’s director of international support services, says such interception would be easy, at least for the NSA. WildPackets sells network analysis software.
An eavesdropper could just “take something off the shelf and use it to make copies of traffic and just save the copies,” Shade said. “Our software captures packets; the data recorder stores terabytes of information. We use it for forensic analysis and troubleshooting networks. When you call back and say, ‘I was hacked Tuesday night at 11:30,’ we look back and see what was going on Tuesday night.“
Making sense of that massive volume of data is not exactly trivial. While it may be easy to perform keyword searches and identify flagged names and phone numbers, detailed analysis typically takes human intervention. “For the near future, at least, our ability to gather info through various surreptitious and open means is going to be a lot better than our ability to analyze it,” said Richard Hunter, vice president of executive programs at Gartner Group…
Because of the way that the Internet backbone and the telecommunication network are structured, NSA operatives likely would not have to leave the country to install taps. The vast majority of Internet traffic is routed through switches on American soil, which can be directly monitored with (or without) the cooperation of backbone providers…
In 2005, an estimated 94 percent of that “inter-regional” traffic passed through U.S. switches, Mauldin said. Many other communications links run around in the U.K., a country that has a history of sharing communications intelligence with U.S. spy agencies.
That’s a boon to the NSA, which reportedly carries out its surveillance activities in a “wholesale” way. That means it potentially scoops up millions of phone calls and e-mail messages and feeds the data to its supercomputers–considered some of the most powerful and plentiful in the world–to comb for red flags and people on a so-called watch list.
Most of the world’s infrastructure goes through the US. There’s also the fiberoptic infrastructure built by Global Crossing before they went bankrupt-unless anyone else has a few billions to build their own infrastructure which /won’t/ get tapped. In the future we won’t have the luxury of building taps into all the nodes, and will have to “haxor” into them instead.
Does anybody think it is just a hoot that the submarine USS Jimmy Carter is being re-tooled to be a high tech eavesdropping machine. Especially after his remarks yesterday.
Putting the cable underseas doesn’t stop someone from tapping it. Ask the USN — which Sturgeon class sub was it that was tasked w/ going into the Sea of Ohktosk (probably butchered that spelling) to tap the Sov lines from Kamchatka back to the mainland?
This is a capability that the USN still realizes the need for. One of the new ‘Virginia-class’ sub’s was redesigned while under construction to handle covert missions — and prob the ability to tap undersea fiber was high on that mission list.
Does anybody think it is just a hoot that the submarine USS Jimmy Carter is being re-tooled to be a high tech eavesdropping machine. Especially after his remarks yesterday.
Posted by: Bill at February 8, 2006 02:10 PM
No, I think it’s another sign of the decline of America.
I also think your response is another sign of America’s decline.
You either stand by the constitution, or you stand by your party affiliation.
As in “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; …“
Or as the president says (hand on bible), “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.“
If you want to spy on foreign enemies, fine.
But if you warrantlessly spy on citizens, your political opposition, Quakers, PETA etc., you’ve crossed a line.
If you can’t see that, you’re part of the problem.
Sarge
Really.….….…… where is your evidence that the federal government without a warrant is spying on any of those organizations. Congress has been consulted by the president on these warrantless searches (however, that is not required by the constitution) and I am sure if they or any non terrorist group was being spied on those loose lips in congress would be blathering directly to CNN. Go back and read it one more time the president is to protect against all enemies foriegn and domestic.
Are you sure that PETA is not a terrorist organization?
The USS Jimmy Carter will be eavesdropping on international calls in the deep ocean not swimming up the Mississippi River to find out what time your kids soccer game is.
THe President is supposed to protect against all enemies foreign and domestic within the Constitution.
Even if there was a law that said he could issue warrantless wiretaps on US Citizens, regardless if it was Usama himself. That law would be unconstitutional.
And there was no law. There was a law that said he can conduct warrantless communications on foreign communications that US Citizens werent a party to. AND he could of conducted warrantless eavesdrops up until 15 days after war had been declared(Although this law is unconstitutional).
His oath does’nt undermine the Constitution.
He has no integrity to the Constitution and the President should be put on trial and impeached.