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AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF

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sabra

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:07 AM
Original message

AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20060406031301790

AT&T Forwards ALL Internet Traffic Into NSA Says EFF

San Francisco � The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T. After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF's filing them under seal � a well-established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence. While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is "presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case."

"The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now."

EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.

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Chimichurri

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:17 AM
Response to Original message

1. This could possibly be the beginning of the

end of the internets as we know it.

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HeatherDawn

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:31 AM
Response to Original message

2. Good I hate privacy

:rofl:

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Ezlivin

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:49 AM
Response to Original message

3. It's a good thing I'm with Verizon. They'd never, ever do that

Would they?

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formercia

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:52 AM
Response to Reply #3

4. Verizon was part of the old AT&T

Prior to the breakup of AT&T, the Government had access to the phone lines. What's good for the Government is good for AT&T.

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OnyxCollie

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:33 AM
Response to Reply #3

10. Verizon is now owned by the Carlyle group.

http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/news/l5-news2792.html

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klook

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Thu Apr-06-06 09:10 AM
Response to Reply #10

14. Linked article mentions only Verizon Hawaii

Does Carlyle already own the rest of Verizon?

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Penance

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:58 PM
Response to Reply #3

26. The issue is deeper than that

AT&T, along with companies like Level 3, PSInet, Sprint and UUNet (which is now owned by *gasp* Verizon) runs part of the "internet backbone" in the US. You may never have heard of them, but you definitely use them every day. Smaller providers in many cases pay large ones for access to their networks similar to how you pay for an ISP. The large providers peer (connect) with each other at many points. The internet routers at those points sort out what info goes where and sends it off to the proper next router. The ISP I'm posting this from only peers with Level 3, so anything going to or from me goes through Level 3's network at some point and then on to where it needs to go through these peering points to other networks.

The bottom line is that if the NSA had deals with just a few major backbone providers, they could snoop on almost all the Internet traffic going through North America. That doesn't just mean only traffic going from and to the US or Canada either. That also means foreign-to-foreign traffic that happens to be routed through the US. It's hard to understate the importance of this.

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Garbo 2004

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Fri Apr-07-06 02:20 AM
Response to Reply #26

39. Yes, exactly. It's not a matter of an individual's ISP, it's the backbone

providers that internet communications have to go through.

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Canuckistanian

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Fri Apr-07-06 02:26 AM
Response to Reply #26

40. Very informative post, thanks

Oh, and welcome to DU...
:toast: :hi:

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Ilsa

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Fri Apr-07-06 10:34 PM
Response to Reply #26

55. Thank you for your post and welcome to DU! That helped me understand

I am not immune from being spied upon just becasue I am with another provider.

God almighty, I hate these people. (Hey you, yeah, you at NSA or DHS, did you get that?)

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cosmicdot

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:04 PM
Response to Reply #3

30. Verizon was created when Bell Atlantic bought GTE

Edited on Thu Apr-06-06 08:19 PM by cosmicdot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications

wasn't GTE one of the companies which pushed for breaking up AT&T?

On February 14, 2005, Verizon agreed to acquire MCI, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T just a few weeks earlier. In 1997, GTE had put in a bid to buy MCI, but accepted Worldcom's offer.

... and GTE, of course, had merged with Contel c. 1991 ... gobble gobble

going further back, GTE had bought Southern Pacific Communication and SP Satellite Communication Companies c. 1984, which became GTE Sprint (long distance/terrestrial-rail access routes; later sold to United Telecommunications/US Telecom, and became US Sprint; and, later, Sprint Nextel) and GTE Spacenet (satellites/sat.communications) ... General Electric (GE Capital) eventually bought out Spacenet from GTE c. 1994, taking the satellites (with a footprint over the continental US), eventually selling the satellite communication network aspect (systems using up/down link dishes to communicate with headquarters, i.e. gas stations; KMarts, US Secret Service, etc.) to a supplier of that hardware, Gilat, an Israeli company c.1999.

it's hard to know what's what anymore

now, what, again, did President T. Roosevelt attempt to do?

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magellan

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:54 AM
Response to Original message

5. Why isn't the government party to this case?

Are we supposed to believe that AT&T decided to direct traffic to the NSA on their own?

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Zorra

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Fri Apr-07-06 10:08 AM
Response to Reply #5

45. Giant corporations like AT&T ARE the government. This is the MO

of republicans and the Bu*h administration - to eliminate democracy and put total control of the government in the hands of private interests. Some call this fascism.

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
-FDR

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rooboy

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Thu Apr-06-06 07:57 AM
Response to Original message

6. This won't stop terrorism OR dissent.

just because you intercept a communication doesn't mean you understand it.

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coalition_unwilling

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:43 PM
Response to Reply #6

23. Furthermore, anybody with even a passing knowlege of

information theory knows that mass dragnets of information bring up the "signal to noise" ration, whereby you can't distinguish the signal from the background noise.

See also, FBI's failure to translate warnings of 9/11 before hijackings due to lack of translation capacity.

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OnyxCollie

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Thu Apr-06-06 11:17 PM
Response to Reply #23

35. That's what we were capable of at that time.

Who knows what they can do now.

Report to the Director General for Research of the European Parliament

http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/interception_capabilities_2000.htm

In the absence of effective wordspotting or speaker identification techniques, NSA has sought alternative means of automatically analysing telephone communications. According NSA's classification guide, other techniques examined include Speech detection - detecting the presence or absence of speech activity; Speaker discrimination - techniques to distinguish between the speech of two or more speakers; and Readability estimation - techniques to determine the quality of speech signals. System descriptions must be classified "secret" if NSA "determines that they represent major advances over techniques known in the research community".

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coalition_unwilling

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Fri Apr-07-06 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #35

48. No matter what they are now capable of, they can't escape

the fundamental information theory conundrum of "signal to noise." This morning, I heard on Rachel Matto show on AAR (sp?) that AT&T had routed *all* of its Internet traffic to the NSA. While I don't want to say it's absolutely impossible, I would say that the odds of finding anything useful out from such an information dragnet would be almost infinitesimal.

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Canuckistanian

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Fri Apr-07-06 02:37 AM
Response to Reply #23

41. There just aren't enough humans to make sense of it

I don't care how sensitive your searching algorithms are, you're not going to catch every nuance of a conversation, especially between people who know each other very well or have pre-arranged some coded message.

You can catch something obvious, naturally, but then any self-respecting terrorist can easily deduce this happening. They know they're being spied on.

Hell, they could use some reference to a well-known event or saying in their own country and we'd miss it. We don't have the cultural or lingusitic background to fully understand the meaning.

Al-Qaeda knows this and they're very savvy.

They've faced worse investigations and survived.

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OnyxCollie

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:39 AM
Response to Reply #41

43. Spy on... terrorists?

Edited on Fri Apr-07-06 08:41 AM by blackops

Hey, yeah! Terrorists. We could use this to spy on terrorists! Lemme write that down...

Why should we believe this is being used to spy on terrorists, and not Dems, anti-war activists, etc? I'm sure they decided to break the law in the best interests of the American people.:sarcasm:

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Canuckistanian

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Fri Apr-07-06 09:01 AM
Response to Reply #43

44. Just a modest suggestion

I know it doesn't do a thing to curb vicious quaker anti-war groups, but it might be useful.

:D

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EFerrari

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:12 AM
Response to Original message

7. If they want to share my internet use, then they need to share

my expenses. :evilgrin:

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readmoreoften

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:16 AM
Response to Original message

8. Why do I hate freedom? /nt

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Peggy Day

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:31 AM
Response to Original message

9. Is there an alternative to AT & T that keeps our privacy in mind? nt

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populistdriven

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Thu Apr-06-06 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #9

18. Definitely not Cingular or Verizon, the others may also use ATT upstream.

Edited on Thu Apr-06-06 12:48 PM by bushmeat

Anyone know the answer? The best place to find this out is probably www.howardforums.com

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AuntiBush

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Thu Apr-06-06 12:59 PM
Response to Reply #18

21. Bushmeat: Question...

Edited on Thu Apr-06-06 01:00 PM by AuntiBush

Cingular and Verizon are "ok?"

Seemed to have heard differently, late last summer.

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populistdriven

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:54 PM
Response to Reply #21

24. *not* ok

sorry if I wasnt clear. :D

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Jose Diablo

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:41 AM
Response to Original message

11. This wouldn't have happened under the old Ma Bell

Edited on Thu Apr-06-06 08:42 AM by Jose Diablo

The old timer technicians would have taken the work order that had to be worked by the techs to set-up the facilities for the diversion of traffic and told the management to stick it where the sun don't shine, the CWA would have backed the techs. It would have gone up the line and all the techs would have walked, if necessary. The techs would have copied the work orders and during the end of day beers would have delivered those copies to their buddies working the presses at the newspapers. All this would have become public information in pretty short order. Asshole Republicans.

That split-up of Ma Bell, busted the workers chops. There is probably not too many left that even know what the communication privacy laws are and the workers responsibilities to keep communication private. And the governments responsibility to stay out of private communication unless a warrant is obtained.

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bananas

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Thu Apr-06-06 11:51 AM
Response to Reply #11

17. A joke from the movie "The Presidents Analyst"

the largest spy agency in the world is AT&T

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PassingFair

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Thu Apr-06-06 10:02 PM
Response to Reply #17

33. It MUST be the...

Pudlians!

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InkAddict

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Fri Apr-07-06 10:30 PM
Response to Reply #11

54. Bawaaa haaa haaa@!

That's what you may think, but NOT TRUE! While the old-timer techs might have wanted to do that, they were actually not very effective in thwarting their orders from "management." As for the union, CWA and the "Pioneers" didn't stand up for anyone except their wealthy officers, the better to screw and undermine the little old-timers in Central Office Repair.

To this day, I know one such old-timer techie who absolutely refuses to use the phone for anything other than the quickest, most mundane communication, perhaps once a year, needed or not! You say bunker sub-stations? There were maps! Re-routes into already heavy traffic areas resulting in slower hang-times and less effective service, you bet. The trouble then were bosses without any field experience in the jumbled mess than were LD phone lines, just book-smarts of how things "should be."

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leQ

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Thu Apr-06-06 08:47 AM
Response to Original message

12. no mention of echelon. (n/t)

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area51

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Thu Apr-06-06 09:05 AM
Response to Reply #12

13. "no mention of echelon."

That's what I wondered about too.

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Supersedeas

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Thu Apr-06-06 09:17 AM
Response to Reply #13

15. today's version of 'journalism' do not practice that kind of 'wonder'

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pauliedangerously

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Fri Apr-07-06 01:17 AM
Response to Reply #13

37. Echelon is part of UUNET

Using 30+ day old cached answer (or, you can get fresh results).
Hiding E-mail address (you can get results with the E-mail address).

UUNET Technologies, Inc. UUNETCBLK228 (NET-205-228-0-0-1)
205.228.0.0 - 205.231.255.255
Echelon UU-205-229-50 (NET-205-229-50-0-1)
205.229.50.0 - 205.229.51.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2006-02-15 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

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Fiendish Thingy

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Thu Apr-06-06 11:46 AM
Response to Original message

16. k&r n/t

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0007

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Thu Apr-06-06 12:51 PM
Response to Original message

19. Guess that's why AT&T is running all those internet connections

specials since they took over SBC. They have been bugging me endlessly. They're favorite trick is to over charge you, then when you call them, they put the squeeze on. Three straight months now.

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shanti

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Fri Apr-07-06 01:54 AM
Response to Reply #19

38. SBC yahoo

bad news!

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NYC

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Thu Apr-06-06 12:54 PM
Response to Original message

20. It's a giant vacuum cleaner. They spy on everything.

Edited on Thu Apr-06-06 12:54 PM by NYC

Read James Bamford's books:
The Puzzle Palace
Body of Secrets

In one of those books I read something that essentially said: At the end of the day, they throw the birthday greetings in the burn bag.

In other words, they sweep it all up, then discard what they do not want.

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alfredo

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:40 PM
Response to Original message

22. The EFF must have run a traceroute. If you are going to spy,

cover your tracks assholes!!!

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Orsino

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:57 PM
Response to Reply #22

25. A traceroute wouldn't show this "forwarding," or anyone...

...would see a huge jump in latency. The story obviously refers to something attached to AT&T that logs Internet traffic. Truly "forwarding" all AT&T traffic would require another whole network the size of AT&T's--and NSA would have to dedicate the same capacity even to receive it.

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alfredo

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Thu Apr-06-06 04:36 PM
Response to Reply #25

28. the could have set up shop within AT&T facilities.

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Orsino

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Thu Apr-06-06 09:52 PM
Response to Reply #28

32. I'm sure that's what they've done...

...and that AT&T isn't the only provider to "cooperate" so fully.

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superconnected

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Thu Apr-06-06 01:59 PM
Response to Original message

27. In democracy the gov is not supposed to fear the people

it's supposed to exist soley for the people.

at least that's what I learned in US history when we read the declaration of independence.

The only govs that fear the people are autocratic.

We need to throw out king george and become a democracy again.

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Rex

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Thu Apr-06-06 04:40 PM
Response to Original message

29. Well that explains why Halliburton was trying to 'snoop' my PC.

AT&T just bought my phone company (SBC) and I have been having horrible issues with bandwidth lately. I should have figured it was my asshole, fascist gummit trying to undermine the Constitution again!

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EmperorHasNoClothes

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Thu Apr-06-06 09:52 PM
Response to Original message

31. I'm going to start limiting my internet traffic to nothing but this

Over, and over, and over:

*&@% YOU, AT&T! *&@% YOU, NSA!

See if they catch on.

:evilgrin:

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dchill

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Thu Apr-06-06 11:11 PM
Response to Original message

34. Bush & Co. really, really, really, really, ...

really, really, really, really, really, really, do hate us for our freedoms. We have met the terrorists, and they are us.

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pauliedangerously

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Fri Apr-07-06 01:10 AM
Response to Original message

36. WHEW!!! Not traversing AT&T today to get to DU!!!

debian1:~# traceroute www.democraticunderground.com
traceroute to www.democraticunderground.com (216.158.28.197), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1) 1.059 ms 1.040 ms 1.024 ms
2 mpls-dsl-gw07-199.mpls.qwest.net (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) 32.759 ms 32.630 ms 32.972 ms
3 mpls-agw1.inet.qwest.net (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) 31.997 ms 32.829 ms 31.999 ms
4 mpl-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.128.21) 32.981 ms 32.534 ms 36.950 ms
5 cer-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.8.14) 42.778 ms 41.093 ms 43.092 ms
6 chp-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.139.146) 41.914 ms 41.667 ms 41.556 ms
7 p1-0.core01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.10.121) 42.112 ms 40.985 ms 41.876 ms
8 v3493.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.246) 42.184 ms 42.019 ms 41.762 ms
9 v3499.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.9) 43.126 ms 42.252 ms 45.076 ms
10 g12-0-0-5.core02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.253) 41.617 ms 48.754 ms 40.985 ms
11 p6-0.core02.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.85) 64.165 ms 82.457 ms 84.727 ms
12 p13-0.core01.phl01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.2) 191.095 ms 80.995 ms 79.005 ms
13 v104.na01.b003003-1.phl01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.5.38) 68.999 ms 68.151 ms 67.748 ms
14 DCANET.demarc.cogentco.com (66.28.12.46) 67.939 ms 68.529 ms 68.339 ms
15 core-4-gig-vlan-500.hq.dca.net (216.158.2.2) 69.961 ms 69.630 ms 68.996 ms
16 *

(HOPS 2 & 3 X'd out for privacy...AS IF)

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yurbud

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Fri Apr-07-06 10:45 AM
Response to Reply #36

47. nah--see V for Vendetta, regime got worried when most being monitored

talked about how much gov sucked.

Puts them on defensive.

Instead of furtiveness, we should do as much in the open as possible.

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arikara

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Fri Apr-07-06 03:11 AM
Response to Original message

42. There has never been privacy

even before the internets.

One of my friends used to work for the telephone company and he warned me more than 20 years ago to never say anything over the phone that I didn't want to have overheard.

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yurbud

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Fri Apr-07-06 10:42 AM
Response to Original message

46. kick

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givemebackmycountry

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:58 PM
Response to Original message

49. Devestating story about AT&T and domestic spying...they gave everything up

Our friend John Aravosis at Americablog.com is all over this.
According to John, AT&T gave up everything.
EVERYTHING.

I never have posted in LBN and I hope this qualifies.
This is BIG.

According to an AT&T whistleblower, the telephone giant made available to a government snoop every single phone call you made, every single email you wrote, every single online video or text chat you ever had, a list of every Web site or chat room you ever visited, copies of every photo you've ever downloaded or emailed or received, so government spies could go through it and do whatever it is they do when they peep into your private life.

If that ain't bad enough...

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 cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/04/att-allegedly-gave-nsa-access-to-all.html

Check it out.
If they are doing it so is MCI and Sprint.

"They hate us for our freedoms"

Der Monkey

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Nickster

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #49

50. Pretty sad, I pretty much just assumed this was happening already. n/t

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hobbit709

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #49

51. I always assume the government is watching

I've assumed that and acted accordingly since the days of Nixon. If I have something to say that I don't want them to hear, I'll never say it on the phone or on the internet.
Old joke from the the Iron Curtain days:
Q "How do you play Russian Roulette?

A "When there's six people in the room telling antistate jokes and you don't know who the informer
is"

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FormerOstrich

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #49

52. That's a lotta data...

It's no wonder that the government can't seem to get things accomplished when they are so busy deciphering what Mom, Aunt Jane, and Cousin Sue were talking about. Just the sheer volume of information makes any endeavor such as this laborious and ineffective. Any self respecting terrorists probably select their words carefully.

How can they say the illegal "wire tapping" is limited in scope (only people speaking to terrorists) when they are gathering such huge amounts of data?

Disgusting!

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salin

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Fri Apr-07-06 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #49

53. and yet... many Americans still buy the line that the NSA

fisaless searches are - as bush asserts (but there are no caveats in the policy that indicate this is true) that they only eavesdrop on those who allegedly have communications with suspected members of al qeada. Albeit for those who read the news - this past week fomer whitehouse legal counsel and now Attorney General Gonzales has admitted to congress that there are no such limitations and that it is there policy to spy on anyone (with no judicial oversight) that the pres (or his 'designees') determine they chose to spy on.

This story, were it to get large airing, would blow the public complaceny (desire to believe the lines of he president per only a small amount of domestic spying going on) out of the water.

This is a huge story.

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