AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA? 682
An anonymous reader writes "SpamDailyNews is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a brief that claims AT&T has been forwarding internet traffic directly into the hands of the NSA. The brief was filed under seal (a procedure that allows only the judge and the litigants to view the document) in order to give the court time to review the information. From the article: '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.'"
Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
One big question (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of control ? (Score:3, Insightful)
at what point do you realise that the current administration is out of control , perhaps when soldiers are knocking on your door ?
seems like the enemy is very much within, isn't democracy wonderful
Gee, how long will it take... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading your comment I think thought, "And perhaps this is why Net Neutrality will never happen."
Re:One big question (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry. He'll be hunted down.
Email isn't protected communications. (Score:4, Insightful)
Before anyone screams that they should be protected just remember if it was protected then using a network sniffer would become illegal! You can not have it both ways.
If you want private communications then use encryption, the phone, or send a letter.
The person that wrote this was trying to inflame people or doesn't understand what communications are protected and are not.
It begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Separation of... (Score:2, Insightful)
Details... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, are they talking about forwarding ALL AT&T traffic to NSA? I find that really really hard to believe. How much data is that? Can someone point to some known tech that can handle that....ALL that data? I'm not asking for "secret-I-bet-they-have-cold-fusion-computers" BS tech that someone *thinks* the NSA has.
Second, this is just an accusation. There's one guy that has some documents that say that's what AT&T is doing. For all we know, this guy could be wearing tin-foil hats and singing to his dog about the aliens. He's doing this through the EFF, which to me doesn't lend much to this accusation, considering how they've handled things in the past. They don't exactly have a great track record.
We need details, people, details.
Constitutional violation (Score:2, Insightful)
The Fourth Amendment guards against searches, arrests, and seizures of property without a specific warrant or a "probable cause" to believe a crime has been committed. A general right to privacy has been inferred from this amendment and others by the Supreme Court...
You think Verizon is different? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the policy side, this is an issue of trust and secrecy. This kind of intelligence operation is something you want to be available due to its good uses (and don't want to know about it), but you are afraid of because of the way the government can abuse it. The current administration has greatly reduced my trust in the professionalism of the US intelligence agencies to the point where I'm willing to support this kind of lawsuit.
Re:One big question (Score:3, Insightful)
What does it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what the irony in this is? We make hideous fun of countries like China where this kind of thing is standard operating procedure, but when we do it, it's supposedly to protect us from the terrorists. How does something like this come about?
I can't repeat this quote enough:
The question burning in my mind is this: How much will it take? How far does the government have to go before everyone says, "Enough!" and finally recognizes the greater danger that we're all in? How badly does our government have to act before people take up the call to arms and start rioting in the streets of this outrageous behavior?
For all the I-have-nothing-to-hiders out there, let me make it clear: I do have things that I'd rather stay hidden, and it's none of your damn business, and none of George W. Bush's damn business, what they are. And whenever a government goober tells me, "Trust me," that's the first sign that I shouldn't. We shouldn't have to blindly trust the government, that's why we friggin' fought England over 200 years ago!
Needless to say, I'm sure as hell glad I don't have AT&T, because it saves me the trouble of cancelling my account and writing a nasty letter about why.
Re:Gee, how long will it take... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the issues in the elections, its all about gay marriage (taking away someone's rights to make them live the way you want them to) and other meaningless bullshit. No one is going to get elected running on a platform of restoring personal freedom. And that's truly sad.
Re:Gee, how long will it take... (Score:5, Insightful)
The scariest part is I don't know how true that is. Now I have no scientific polling or anything but just the people I speak to it seems the majority have the opinion:
- If your not doing anything wrong what are you worried about?
or
- Well we have to take care of our national security first before any rights really matter
That a government will so readily abuse its power is certainly not a suprise (disturbing but entirely predictable). However, the ease with which so many citizens seem ready to give up protections we have taken for granted is the scariest part (at least to me).
How is that news ? (Score:3, Insightful)
China Vs. USA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Constitutional violation (Score:3, Insightful)
The right to a trial (jose padilla)
Due process (rest of the gitmo detainees)
Protection from cruel and usual punishment (um, hello?)
Right to peaceably assemble (protests at RNC and Presidential Inauguration)
Prevention of the federal government from assuming powers not granted in the constitution (war on drugs)
Get in line, bub.
It doesn't matter if you are a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gee, how long will it take... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will they open documents? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are certainly tools that can track and record every byte sent on every port on a saturated 100 MHz link, and write it to local disk. Given that the trans-atlantic links are rarely GigE capable, a rack of such devices should easily monitor and re-assemble all the traffic desired. www.sandstorm.com, for example, sells exactly that sort of monitoring tool called "Netintercept", commercially. There's no reason to think the NSA doesn't use them or hasn't reverse engineered them.
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
The feds--and many economists--have no problem with AT&T essentially reassembling itself because competition exists today that did not exist in the past. Cable companies, wireless companies and straight VoIP providers can all provide telephone service in direct competition with typical land-line phone companies. The phone companies are also competing with those companies on THEIR domains (for example, video over Internet lines--the reason they're interested in laying fiber all of the sudden).
These new forms of competition are also, undoubtedly, why you are hearing phone companies beginning to make a stink about charging people to carry traffic over their pipes.
Re:how sad (Score:5, Insightful)
When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.
Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.
Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.
Stop for a second and try to fathom that.
At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?
Re:Email isn't protected communications. (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be true, but there are provisions which are intended to prevent undue surveilance and the like.
Handing everything over, wholesale, for no good reason, without oversight just because they want it? Come on, if that's not a violation of the intent, and probably the letter, of the constitution -- then what the hell is??? They're just surveiling everyone hoping to get lucky.
The USA is NOT supposed to be Soviet Russia where every single person is routinely surveiled on the off beat chance they may have done something wrong. The scary consequences of this is that even though they're ostensibly doing this in "teh fight agin' terrorism", they'll probably not take long to start passing off every single little infraction to other branches of law-enforcement.
Believe me, the comparison to Big Brother gets more apt by the week.
Shamrock lives! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It begins (Score:3, Insightful)
why do people presume any privacy at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One big question (Score:2, Insightful)
Gee, I sure am glad they rushed to inform us.
Re:Out of control ? (Score:3, Insightful)
There seem to be two kinds of people. Those who are willing to give up rights that don't seem that important to them in exchange for a little extra "security" and those who don't want to give up their rights under any circumstances.
The first group needs to wake up and realize that once you give your rights away, they are not coming back. This stuff only goes one way. The government will take every inch that is given to them (and then some) and never yield. It may not seem like such a big deal to have a national id card or to give up a few small rights (only criminals should care!), but it is a slippery slope. This is all going to snowball unless people stop it from happening now. Our rights will be slowly eroded until we're living in a police state with no freedom.
I'd much rather risk being blown up by terrorists to be free than be safe, dumb, fat, and happy with no freedom.
Re:Gee, how long will it take... (Score:3, Insightful)
the majority, and the Constitution, which protects the rights of the minority. This only works
as long as the Constitution is honored. We now live in a culture where many
people care little about others, as long as they themselves have their freedoms. Politicians are
free to ignore the Constitution, as long as their actions only injure a minority of the voters.
How do we change the current culture of self-absorption that leads to environmental disasters
(global warming), human rights violations (Wal-Mart, Nike), health problems (rampant obesity
and addiction), socioeconomic imbalances (illegal immigrants), and many other problems?
Re:Can't believe this..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you referring to the same congress which sat idle while the Executive branch took a hot carl on FISA, and illegally wiretapped an untold number of telephone calls? The congress which has abdicated its constitutional responsibility, by allowing the Executive to tacitly declare and wage war on a foreign nation? Done nothing of substance to preserve and protect the human rights of persons imprisoned as terrorist suspects or 'enemy combatants'?
Congress is little more than a distraction at this point. The appearance of careful management is truly nothing more than the careful management of appearances - a cliched phrase, which is in fact a cliche due to the fact that it is an oft-repeated basic truth.
Re:Out of control ? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was shot down, where did it crash? People tend to report flaming airplane wreckage in their back yards.
If it landed safely, how did all the ATCs between Dulles and LAX miss it? Did The Conspiracy eliminate them, too?
Did The Conspiracy eliminate the passengers and crew once they landed? And the aircrews servicing the plane?
Maybe The Conspiracy is actually in charge of all the ATCs, and all ground crews. My God, alert Kos!
Re:You think Verizon is different? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not legal to flood LA with crack [pbs.org] to fund military coops in South America. Never stopped the CIA. What makes you think this is any different? What makes you think they actually follow the law?
Is your brain turned on today? ;-)
Re:how sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It surprises you that no one complains about the detention without trial of a few thousand people who are accused of terrorism in a country where no one complained about the dentention of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans who weren't even accused of anything? You obviously have a higher opinion of your fellow citizens than most of them deserve.
I'm so sick of "Current Administration" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, they're scum. Name anyone who ever ran for President and got more than 40% of the vote without betraying America and selling us out so that they could afford the best TV ads.
The real problem is that the federal government has this power to begin with. The fact that they abuse it, is totally uninteresting, because it's so expected. You give a gun to chimps and then wonder why someone got shot. I look at the Constitution, the 10th Amendment, etc, and wonder why the chimp is armed.
If you want an America that doesn't suck, then make it so that it doesn't matter who is president or who gets into Congress, because the positions would wield so little power. And the good news is, the Constitution is already written to support this. We just have to call them on it, and Just Say No every time they try to pass a law based on the justification that something is expedient or efficient or "seems like a good idea."
Re:One big question (Score:1, Insightful)
Tried it once (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It begins (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One big question (Score:3, Insightful)
I especialy like this bit though:
"Mark Klein is a true American hero," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "He has bravely come forward with information critical for proving AT&T's involvement with the government's invasive surveillance program."
So GI Joe has stopped being the "true American hero", and passed the honours on to a retired, balding computer-geek
Anyway, guess we'll have to see how this plays out in court.
Re:Coincidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is indeed scary (Score:4, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that the vast majority of internet traffic and/or telephone traffic could be stored for later easy access (or at least access at a much later time). You have problems of information overload and quite frankly data storage as well.
The problem is not in the idea that the calls are probably being stored, but that every call is being passively monitored (and temporarily recorded). In essence, everyone must operate under the assumption that every telephone call, every email, and every post to Slashdot is at least passively being passively watched by Big Brother. The potential for chilling effects in areas such as discussing whether the Hamas victory in the PA elections is a good thing is pretty high, what the real meaning of "Jihad" is, etc.
In essence, this creates a widespread, if passive, surveillance structure which creates a chilling effect on legitimate political discussions. If you think it only effects terrorists, you are incredibly mistaken. It effects anyone who takes an interest in Middle-Eastern politics, anyone who wants to have religious discussions online with Muslims, and anyone who is afraid he/she might have had a runin with people who might be watched by even rogue members of the NSA.
This is exactly the danger that the 1st and 4th ammendments were designed to prevent.
This is Completely Untrue (Score:1, Insightful)
Seems like a good time to mention... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know... if you're into that sort of thing...
(Of course, using it just proves that you have something to hide... so maybe you'll get in trouble anyway.)
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Start using it, get everyone you know to use it. Encrypt everything.
Exactly. Those of us who are Internet old-timers have long understood that the online world is in fact totally open. There is no privacy online. Never has been, and never will be.
You should always assume that everything here is visible to everyone, and may be archived at lots of places you don't know about. The NSA's archives are just one of many places where our words and pictures are being enshrined for posterity. Consider, for example, that every email you've ever sent is potentially available to every prospective employer, and to all your relatives and friends.
There is nothing much any of us can do about this. If you don't like this, don't put things online. This includes email. As soon as it goes out of your machine, you have no way of knowing who has a copy.
Encryption is partly successful at fighting this. If you've used a good encryption scheme, reading your words will be very expensive for a bystander, so they won't do it without good reason. But with enough computing power, most encryption other than a truly random one-time pad can be broken. And computing power is getting cheaper, so with time, the cost of decrypting your stuff will drop. So it will mostly buy you time before your stuff can be read by everyone.
The real problem now is that, while everything on the Internet is potentially visible to those with political and economic power, the opposite isn't true. Imagine the effects if everything in every government and corporate office (and neighborhood bar
OK; what would mostly happen is that in most cases the onlookers would fall asleep. But it's interesting to think of a world in which we could access all of our own governments' and employers' information. This could go a long way toward loosening their power over us.
There have been a few sci-fi novels written that deal with such a scenario. Anyone want to mention their favorite?
And I'm so sick of over generalization (Score:3, Insightful)
I call bullshit. They're not all the same. Some are definitely, demonstrably better or worse than others. The "Current Administration," in my opinion, will go down in history as THE WORST administration this country has ever had up to the present day - in so many ways and for so many reasons - to what is truly a treasonable extent. Given the outright contempt for the existing laws of the U.S., the spirit in which they were written and the rights of the citizens of the U.S. (to a degree and with an arrogance and seeming malice unequalled in previous U.S. history) demonstrated by this "Current Administration" on an almost daily basis, it is very important to know that it wasn't always this way, and it doesn't need to be this way.
Painting all politicians and political/governmental decisons and activities with the same brush, denouncing one and all as "chimps" or "scum" is muddleheaded thinking that does more to exacerbate the problem than it does to help it. It's a cop out, a blank check to take your toys and go home, rather than expending the effort to find and empower the next Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson or Lincoln. It's the mindset of the victim at heart - I can't do anything so I'll just suffer noisily because everyone else is an idiot. You have to do more than "Just Say No," because you think everyone but you knows what's what. You have to find those who can bring ideas to which it makes sense to say yes to office, you have to elect the non-scum - they're out there, but you won't find them or be served by them with the kind of attitude that lumps all politicians and public servants into the same sludge bin indiscriminately.
If you want the real U.S. back you have to work for it, we all do, and that means much more than just saying no and bitching about how all politicians suck.
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they're more a shell corporation that exists partly so that this sort of logic can be used to exempt them from legal restrictions (such as the Bill of Rights) than would apply to a government agency. They have always been a government agency in all but the legal niceties.
Their basic business involves selling something that pretty much has to be done by a government agency. Otherwise, we'd have the scenario of hundreds or thousands of companies running wires down our streets. At any given time, half those wires would be down, the streets would be impassible by vehicles, and our kids and pets would be in danger of electrocution if they wandered outside. So the government outlaw such wiring, except to strictly regulated corporations.
(This isn't hypothetical. Here in Boston, we've had several large dogs electrocuted by contact with a manhole cover, and in New York, at least one human has died this way. The pseudo-private electric companies haven't been punished in any meaningful way for these deaths.)
The problem is that in the US and many other countries, there are legal restrictions on how a government agency can (mis)use this wiring. The Bill of Rights guarantees us freedom of speech, assembly, and so on. A government agency couldn't enforce a "no servers" rule, for instance; we'd just say "First Ammendment", and the courts would rule in our favor. A government agency couldn't legally restrict our use of the wires, just as they can't restrict our use of the roads, unless they could show that we're engaged in illegal activities. A government agency couldn't intercept and record our traffic without a court order.
But AT&T can legally do all these things, because legally they're "not government". They are created by the government, their monopoly is enforced by the government, and they are at the mercy of the government for their regulated profits. So they act like a government agency, but one without the need to abide by such silly restrictions as the Bill of Rights.
We're just seeing one of the more blatant violations of the Bill of Rights that this legal arrangement makes possible.
Re:Out of control ? (Score:1, Insightful)
I've done everything I could to help this country, just as I did in the past, but the problems are bigger than I am. Some could claim my attitude is "defeatist" and "unpatriotic" because I'm not committed to sticking around for the other shoe to drop, but the nationalists are always helpful enough to remind me they don't want "my kind" here anyways. The only country that would welcome me wants to hand me a rifle and send me into combat against people I don't want to kill. When I'm not accused of being a Christ-killer, I'm accused of being a "raghead". I can't teach civility to mobs that have chosen to be ignorant, I don't have enough votes to change the system, I don't have enough money to bribe officials into changing their evil ways, and even if I could, I would just be at the mercy of a higher bidder.
Canada is less awful than the US at the moment, although it couldn't hurt to start taking lessons on Norwegian.
Re:It begins (Score:3, Insightful)
A revolution might not be able to hop in tanks and slug it out with an armored division, but superior strategy and tactics can still win. It's a matter of knowing how to pit your strengths against the enemies weaknesses. Take the fight on your terms, not the enemies. Another book I'd recommend is "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. Which you should read anyways, while mainly written about warfare it really is applicable to all forms of human conflict.