Ryan Singel has himself a big, fat scoop. We already knew that telecom companies were cooperating with the NSA to eavesdrop on domestic and international communications. Now, Ryan reveals how it was done.
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker…
According to a statement released by Klein’s attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T’s #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls…
“While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T’s internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal,” Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein’s statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, “known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets.”
UPDATE 04/10/06 9:10 AM: Lots more on Naurus’ data-sniffing products here, including one “capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second.”
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Does this really qualify as a big, fat scoop? I mean, we already know that the feds are conducting surveillance for terrorist related traffic (thankfully). It’s implicit that they are tapping into communications trunks then, no?
The only way this really qualifies as a scoop is to someone who believes that terrorist have some Constitutional right to plan their dastardly deeds in complete privacy.
Ah, so the NSA only monitored the bits that were sent by terrorists, John? There is some sort of flag on their communications that says “I’m a terrorist! Watch my email!” and the NSA just covered their eyes when uncountable terabytes of other peoples’ communications were streaming by?
Utter nonsense.
I absolutely DO have a Constitutional right to privacy. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is no basis for a civil society.
>>> There is some sort of flag on their communications that says “I’m a terrorist! Watch my email!”
Umm, yeah. You did bother to read the blurb, right? You may have missed this part…
>>> its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets.
Only data, email and calls that are either specifically targeted for an individual or fit the pre-programmed criteria for suspect terrorist activity are intercepted and examined by human eyes and ears. Or do you believe the NSA spends it’s days and nights reading your love letters and eavesdropping in on Grandma’s description of her famous banana bread recipe?
Get a grip. The intelligence agencies are *supposed* to be actively hunting for and intercepting communications between individuals that mean you bodily harm.
The tactic of ignoring terrorist threats and employing weak-sister responses to things like multiple embassy destruction as deployed by the previous administartion proved to be a disaster. Let’s all pray we are never again put in harms way by such willful avoidance of reality again.
Hi guys this is the article you should read, now GCHQ is what we have in the UK and it listens to ALL DATA (Phone, Email, Internet, Fax) it’s here now and doing it’s job. But what you need to ask is who are the real terrorists.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html?tw=wn_index_1
John, dont confuse Lee with facts. It’s not fair.
The only way this really qualifies as a scoop is to someone who believes that terrorist have some Constitutional right to plan their dastardly deeds in complete privacy.
Sacrificing my Constitutional right to privacy in the process means they’ve already won.
John: as you say, I’m sure. But this is bad news for America and AT&T. The US handles most of the world’s internet traffic because other nations use our networks instead of building their own. The reason they use our network instead of building their own is because of the Bill of Rights, the perceived firewall between the government and private persons.
The Founding Fathers never heard of firewalls, but they invented the greatest one, just the same. Now that firewall has been breached and the next decade will see the end of US dominance in telecommunications because our most important comparative advantage has been frittered away. The communications of the future will go through networks that not only cannot be monitored randomly, but which cannot be accessed with US warrants.
Feel safer yet?
Trust can be built, but not rebuilt. People did business with the US on the assumption of certain rules that were rewritten in secret. They won’t get fooled again. It’s not trivial. The Soviet Union was very safe inside its crumbling bunker. They were also very poor.
I hope these surveillance programs stay in place long enough for Democrats to regain control of the federal government. “ALL your private thoughts are belong to us. Mwahahahahahaha!!”
Everytime these type of articles are published, it is risking American lives in the war on terror in trade for pure entertainment (only few value from such information, more likely the enemy). In other words, Defense Tech staff could be one to indirectly kill people by providing information to the terrorists like this article has done. Yes, you can kill people by information, just like Navsats attempt to send people in to death traps by non-existing phantom routes.
Hmm. Risking lives in exchange for pure entertainment? (pedestrian’s comment). There’s nothing entertaining about having the government breath down your neck. For decades we’ve heard of the secret government tapes that turn on if you whisper code words like “kill bush” or “Cheney is a big fat weeny”. Now we are told that wire tapping is alive and rampant and backed by one of the biggest phone companies. On one hand, if you’re doing nothing wrong, who cares what they’re listening to, but on the other hand, why do I have to conduct every conversation with the implicit knowledge that somebody or some robot is listening to my every word, every nuance, and categorizing every number and time of call? They most likely aren’t categorizing your grandma’s banana bread recipe, but they are recording it in the first place. Maybe they can use the information for marketing purposes: Osama’s Baked Banana Bread Surprise. Ohhawhat a funny joke.
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