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-- AT&T, Group Challenge U.S. Spy Program
AT&T, Group Challenge U.S. Spy Program
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AT&T, Group Challenge U.S. Spy Program By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer 27 minutes ago AT&T Inc. and an Internet advocacy group are waging in federal court a privacy battle that could expose the reach of the Bush administration's secretive domestic wiretapping program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it obtained documents from a former AT&T technician showing that the National Security Agency is capable of monitoring all communications on AT&T's network. "It appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet, whether that be people's e-mail, Web surfing or any other data," whistle-blower Mark Klein, who worked for the company for 22 years, said in a statement released by his lawyers. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is considering whether to unseal documents that Klein provided and AT&T wants kept secret. EFF filed the documents under seal as a courtesy to the phone company, but is seeking to unseal them. The EFF lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks to stop the surveillance program that started shortly after the 2001 terror attacks. The suit is based in large part on the Klein documents, which detail secret spying rooms and electronic surveillance equipment in AT&T facilities. The suit claims AT&T company not only provided direct access to its network that carries voice and data but also to its massive databases of stored telephone and Internet records that are updated constantly. AT&T violated U.S. law and the privacy of its customers as part of the "massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications" without warrants, the EFF alleged. Klein said the NSA built a secret room at the company's San Francisco central office in 2003, adjacent to a "switch room where the public's phone calls are routed." One of the documents under seal, Klein said, shows that a device was installed with the "ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets." Other so-called secret rooms were constructed at AT&T sites in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, the statement said. Other documents under seal show that fiber optic cables from the secret room tapped into WorldNet Internet subscribers, Klein said. The documents also instructed technicians how to connect cables to the secret room. Klein said he was required to connect circuits that fed information to the secret room. The NSA declined directly to address the lawsuit or Klein's allegations, which covered activities at AT&T Corp. before SBC Communications Inc. bought it and became AT&T Inc. late last year. "Any discussion about actual or alleged operational issues would be irresponsible as it would give our adversaries insight that would enable them to adjust and potentially inflict harm to the U.S.," NSA spokesman Don Weber said. Michael Balmoris, an AT&T spokesman, said the San Antonio-based telecommunications company "follows all laws with respect to assistance offered to government agencies." He declined further elaboration, saying AT&T is "not in a position to comment on matters of national security or litigation." President Bush confirmed in December that the NSA has been conducting the surveillance when calls and e-mails, in which at least one party is outside the United States, are thought to involve al-Qaida terrorists. In congressional hearings last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested the president could order the NSA to listen in on purely domestic calls without first obtaining a warrant from a secret court established nearly 30 years ago to consider such issues. He said the administration, assuming the conversation related to al-Qaida, would have to determine if the surveillance were crucial to the nation's fight against terrorism, as authorized by Congress following the Sept. 11 attacks. |
So, is this legal for the government to do?
Thats a brilliant move to go after ATT.
yeah, brilliant or incredibly stupid.
AT&T Wants their Evidence back from the EFF
AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities.
In papers filed late Monday, AT&T argued that confidential technical documents provided by an ex-AT&T technician to the Electronic Frontier Foundation shouldn't be used as evidence in the case and should be returned.
The documents, which the EFF filed under a temporary seal last Wednesday, purportedly detail how AT&T diverts internet traffic to the National Security Agency via a secret room in San Francisco and allege that such rooms exist in other AT&T switching centers.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...l?tw=rss.index
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ACLU is taking on the NSA
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/index.html
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Former AT&T technician Mark Klein has come forward to support the EFF's lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged complicity in the NSA's electronic surveillance. Here, Wired News publishes Klein's public statement in its entirety.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70621-0.html
"AT&T's wholesale diversion of communications into the hands of the NSA violates federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment,"
For more on EFF's suit:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/
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All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/8/14724/28476/
Specifically, this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000, and capturing anything that hits its' semantic (i.e. the meaning of the content) triggers. The latest generation is called NarusInsight, capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second
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You really wonder why BushCo doesn't want to talk about this stuff? It's the biggest invasion of privacy in history by several orders of magnitude.
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Schneier on Security
A weblog covering security and security technology.
AT&T Assisting NSA Surveillance
Interesting details emerging from EFF's lawsuit:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/
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| Originally posted by josh4 Thats a brilliant move to go after ATT. |
Link
April 28, 2006
NSA Warrantless Wiretapping and Total Information Awareness
Technology Review has an interesting article discussing some of the technologies used by the NSA in its warrantless wiretapping program, some of them from the killed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.
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Link2
The Total Information Awareness Project Lives On
Technology behind the Pentagon's controversial data-mining project has been acquired by NSA, and is probably in use.
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Gonzalez's testimony that the government is making increased use of FISA, together with his refusal to explain why it's inapplicable in some cases -- even though retroactive warrants can be issued -- implies that the issue isn't simply that government agents may sometimes want to act quickly. FISA rules demand that old-fashioned "probable cause" be shown before the FISA court issues warrants for electronic surveillance of a specific individual.
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AT&T's data center in Kansas, for instance, contains electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls over several decades.
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a 2004 survey by the U.S. General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found federal agencies operating or developing 199 data mining projects, with more than 120 programs designed to collect and analyze large amounts of personal data on individuals to predict their behavior. Since the accounting office excluded most of the classified projects, the actual numbers would likely have been far higher.
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