Under the Hood of AT&T's Monitoring System 416
pkbarbiedoll writes "The recent discovery of AT&T's monitoring program has raised more than a few eyebrows. While the class action suit filed by EFF is pending (as well as a seperate suit filed against the NSA filed by the ACLU), interested parties are taking the time to learn more about the scope of this massive invasion of privacy. Bewert examines the Narus architecture used by AT&T in their previously shadowed (and ongoing) collaboration with the NSA."
NSA and AT&T (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NSA and AT&T (Score:2)
Re:NSA and AT&T (Score:3, Interesting)
Well brother, they're sifting!
Re:NSA and AT&T (Score:5, Funny)
to the NSA.
Re:NSA and AT&T (Score:3, Informative)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
There is also some additional information [findlaw.com] on the FindLaw site for those that are curious.
Worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worrisome (Score:2)
At one's disposal? LOL. This smells like the access to healthcare canard. Millions of poor folk can't afford health insurance, but the discussion is c
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
With or without their knowledge. Bush happens to be one of those presidents who is more openly scornful of legal restrictions upon his behavior. In reality, we're even more at risk from unelected officials that have even fewer scruples, who are more dangerous simply because they are so hard to remove.
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider part of the foreword from Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance [amazon.com]:
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
What does cynicism have to do with that? It's just human nature that guarantees that it will be used. it doesn't really matter who is in power. No government ever GIVES human rights, they only take them away, just like they do with your money.
All this monitoring of course would be a lot harder if every byte of data any computer ever sent out on the internet would automatically be encrypted. I understand that there are still some forms of encryption that are be resistant to even the kind of processing power mentioned in the article. There is some money to be made by the first person to come up with a simple, powerful, universal encryption program that works for all data and all computers or computer like devices.
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
I totally agree with your sentiment. But...
From TFA: this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000 .
W wasn't elected until November/December 2000.
IOW, Clinton did this, not Bush. Remember Carnivore?
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Interesting)
And using it when authorized and overseen by a neutral, independant party such as the FISA court, or a judge is far different than claiming some absolutely crazy crap, like, "it was authorized by the AUMF" or it's an inherent power in the constitution, or it's available for any president with W as their middle initial.
As an aside, if an AUMF allows that kind of crap, then the next one ought to come just about the same time the sun turns into a red dwarf.
-Greg
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
This being said, many of the most contraversial policies-- the criminalization of pure speech, the extraordinary rendition, and other serious erosions of human and civil rights actually began under Clinton. So unfortunately we cannot merely blame this on Bush as he is largely fulfilling Clinton's policies more than diverging from them.
Re:Worrisome (Score:2)
The Narus ST-6400 was just Carnivore's big brother (no pun intended).
So, when Clinton was President, you trusted the FBI to always follow the rules? And for Bill, Hillary and Janet to follow them, too? ROTFLMAO. Because Carnivore could be so easily misused, the ACLU and the EFF screamed about it, too.
Remember, Carnivore worked/works by looking at every packet, and then capturing those packets that were of interest to them. Just li
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that NO ONE has alleged that Clinton went around doing these things without regard to either the FISA court, or that he lied about how often he would be doing this sneaky thing.
And if you think it all started with Clinton, then I've got to tell you about this bridge near his office that he wants me to sell you. It's a historic, early 19th century suspension bridge, no less.
Blaming Bush is just taking the easy way out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up -- blaming this on anyone one administration, and certainly on any one person, is ridiculously shortsighted. Go ahead and blame it on Bush; the people that actually engineered this sort of policy, wherever they are in the NSA or various other government offices, will probably sell him down the river easily enough. Executives come and go every four or eight years, the attitudes that enable a project like this, even the raw technology itself, takes longer than that to put together.
If you give in to the temptation to blame Bush, along with all the other sheeple over at Daily Kos, you're really ignoring the majority of the problem. It's akin to seeing an iceberg in front of your ship, and sawing off the part you can see above the water and then saying the problem is gone. No it's not, all you did was get rid of the very thing that allowed you to see the problem. The thing that's going to kill you is still lurking below the water. (Ignoring the rather obvious fact that a proportionally equal amount of the iceberg would come back up out of the water as soon as you cut the top off.)
If you build a system that's capable of monitoring everyone's email, it's naive to think that it'll never be used. So the real problem here is that this system was constructed in such a way that it could be used indiscriminately, and to find an answer to why that happened, people have to be willing to look further back into the past than just G.W. Bush, something I'm not sure they're prepared to do. It's too easy and too satisfying to use something like this as political hay, rather than as the wake-up call it ought to be of how systemically out-of-control the government is, and has been for some time.
The behavior of our current and less-than-beloved President is a symptom of a problem, not its root cause.
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think it's the president's idea? Surely the NSA does what the NSA does, regardless of the person who's theoretically supposed to be telling them what to do.
People who've watched Yes Minister will know what I mean.
Or if you've been watching the UK Home Office do its "ID cards" thing regardless of which figurehead is nominally in charge of the department. People used to say that it's all David Blunkett's fault, until he left and his old department of civil servants carried on doing exactly the same thing with a new "leader".
People blame one president for what the FBI, NSA, DHS, etc. are up to, and when that president leaves, it all continues as if nothing had changed. Aren't government bureaucracies the same, the world over?
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Interesting)
You are very much correct. In the US, we refer to it as the Military-Industrial Complex [wikipedia.org]. Some things don't change every 4 years, and the MIC is one of them. The Military-Industrial Complex is a term coined by Eisenhower to describe the entangled relationship of Congress, the Military and Big Business (industry - especially defense contractors).
I've noticed how somethings in our government really don't change. Take Cuba for example. It's been over 45 years and our policy towards Cuba hasn't changed on iota, even after all the different administrations we've been through. In fact, the military very much wanted to attack Cuba back in the 60's. After JFK was able to defuse that situation they decided to escalate Vietnam instead. You see, we need to have wars every few years in order to keep our poor defense contractors fed. We try to minimize (American) casualties, but it's very important that we bomb the hell out of some poor backwards-ass country every few years so we can test out all our cool new weapons, while using up the old ones. We can't buy too many new bombs until we use up the old ones, and how will we field-test each new generation of soldiers unless there's a real conflict to fight in? War is just a business like any other. In fact, you could say it's the engine of our whole economy. Now that you know the War in Iraq is all about buying yachts for the executives and lobbyists of Boeing, Lockheed, and other megacorps, don't you feel so much better about it? War is the American way.
1898 Redux. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that at the core of the American body politic's psyche there is a core of subconscious uneasiness and malaise, which is fed by the deep-rooted fear that as a nation we are becoming powerless,
Remember the Maine (Score:5, Interesting)
I wanted to comment on the AT&T Thing. Narus is company that was started in America by some ex-Israeli Defense Forces people (unit 8200 alumni) who wanted to bring their Semantic monitoring software to America to sell to big telecom. This was always security software and Israel has always been very very far ahead in that realm (because of the "realities" there. There are a lot of these companies that were formed by ex-Defense people, specificially unit 8200. Checkpoint systems is another fine example.
From this article [66.218.69.11] (direct link [cji.co.il]:
Anyway, the original goal was to make a bundle of money selling this stuff. Why? Well, it's useful for a number of reasons. Because the internet has been "redesigned" around business and commerce (and the needs of the consumer), the nature of the network has changed. From the original decentralized network (which did use leased phone lines from Ma Bell, so it's not really decentralized from THEM), now there are huge "tier 1" trunks that carry the majority of the transcontenental data. The idea in the late ninties of "IP Network Convergence" or Voice Data Video etc. all coming out of one pipe was the big hot one. Of course, how do you make money when people are only paying for their ISP connection. Enter "usage-based billing".
The idea behind the Narus system was to create a system to track IP traffic and transactions semantically (because you still didn't know where the traffic might be coming from) and create a sort of database of records like they talked about in TFA. Like the old fashioned telcom "call records", these would record a source and target and the data transmitted. The data would only be stored if "relevant", ie: part of a usage-based service or today, "interesting" ie having actionable words or phrases, etc. Of course, then the thing in New York happened and all of a sudden there was a LOT of funding available for people who had the stuff in place or ready to go and a lot of the old red tape was struck down. Remember "karnivore?" Cohen and his more spooky cohorts made a few calls to 8200 friends (IDF and M*s*ad were working "closely" with the administration) and due to the no-bid process (not unlike that of the Iraq contractors and the Katrina and new york ground zero cleanup operations) they got the job in a sec.
Of course, AT&T is going along because they need support for the big merger with SBC (putting most of the baby bells back together. AT&T was once the largest company on earth and they are set to do it again. Guess what, voice calls are still big business and how do you think your cell phone calls go from tower to tower. You guessed it, land lines..............AT&T has always been an evil company.
Anyway, Narus is the key to everything now. The company was the one pushing for convergence from the beginning and now it's possible to monitor all traffic because it's all on IP. How convenient. Even an anonymizing proxy such as ToR cannot provide the protection you need if one of your packets happens to stray across one or more Narus points. It's a simple matter to monitor the packets and put together not only
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
You speak of the economy as if that was the only thing we need to consider. The equation is far more complex than you make it out to be. You say it's all about the economy. I say, what about morality? What about the basic human kindness of not rampantly killing each other? Besides, war is only fun if you're winning. But you always lose eventually.
Your fantasic delusions of a crime-free society in an endless series of wars reminds me greatly of 1984 [online-literature.com]. Perhaps you should read that book.
Re:Worrisome (Score:2)
The answer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Reminds me of a debate I got into with one of those neo-con pro-biz warhawks just a few years ago about the (yet to occur) effects of the US war on Iraq. Mr. Warhawk was practically beaming about how occupying and rebuilding Iraq would pay for itself, how the US would reap enormous wealth from the influx of Iraqi oil, and that military spending would actually *strengthen* the American ec
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Insightful)
You believe that eh? It's like saying WallMart doesn't need to make anymore money they have enough already. Microsoft doesn't need any more advertising their market is big enough. Pull your head out of your ass man, when you have this much money it's no longer about having enough money to afford an object of your chosing, do you think these guys are saving up for a bigger pool in their backyard? If they can make more they will do evreything they can to make that happen.
You really have your head up your ass on this one, but let me break it down for you anyway. A Pitbull is a type of dog, this dog is known to be agressive by nature and used in dog-fights around the world. Now you may think that these people just get a dog drop it in a ring with another and let em go? No. They beat it, make it angry, provoke it, even after all this it's still not ready you know what they do? They take a little fluffy puppy and make the pitbull rip it apart, now it has the taste of blood and the confidence to kill. Now it makes the first move, now it is battle-hardened, blood and killing no longer scares it or slows it down it just wants more. This is what is happening in Iraq a country with millions of active soilders being told how wars are fought, shooting rounds of ammo in preperation for the one that will kill the other guy. After a while no amount of screaming or preperation can improve their skills as killers they have to actually kill 'a fluffy little dog'. A war they cannot lose a foe that cannot bring the wind out of their sails. They have to see their friends die as well as their enemies and the innocent. Now they go back to the millions and become heros and bring the millions of unready up to a new level, get them frothing at the mouth just waiting for 'fluffy' to rear their head up again. Now have a real core to your army. If you think uncle Sam can pick your scrawny, pale ass give him a gun and your gonna let the frags go like Quake, you would likely shit yourself before you got your first shot off and possibly go into shock when you get real brains splattered all over you.
Now I guess you think you know something really well but look over what was just said....
Where the hell do you get these ideas from?
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Interesting)
I just left a year and a half ago and saw combat in operation Iraqi Freedom. I can say without hesitation, the leadership has their "dicks in their hands" contemplating having a venue in which to "Train" for real. Will people die? Sure, that's never been a problem for the military. They would gladly exchange a few sons for the realism you just can't get in excercises and simulations. The military NEEDS combat veterans. Period. This is an excellent way to grow a new crop. Why the hell did we do Grenada and Panama? Mostly for the opportunity to shake the cobwebs off our war machine.
It is damned refreshing to know some people can actually see what's going on. This not to say I condone these events. I'm just attempting to validate your point of view.
Kudos!
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Interesting)
Carl Sagan made a wry observation about exactly that, back during Iraq War I when the TV news programs were loaded with glowing reports about the Patriot interceptor missiles, "smart" bombs, etc. "[It] was a massive arms bazaar arranged by the United States to showcase some of the products that you, too, might acquire -- and only for all the critical resources of your society that might otherwise be spent on bettering your people. Line up over here!" (excerpt from the Playboy interview).
Re:Worrisome (Score:2)
Too many people today are short sighted in not thinking that just because they don't have a problem with the current administration doesn't mean that the political climate won't change. 230 years of history proves that it will.
LK
Re:Worrisome (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Worrisome (Score:5, Interesting)
The Republican party no longer stands for what it once did, but appears (at least at face value) be a form of liberalism of a different sort, bordering on fascism, either that or leading toward the mythical "new world order" which I used to read up on for kicks, but now after watching the Bush administration in action, now think that there may be at least some element of truth to those conspiracy theories which don't seem so crazy any more.
Thankfully some Republicans have awoken and have realized that the GOP is not what it once was.
In the next election whom do we vote for though? A big-government Democrat, or a big-government Republican, both of which seem to want to institute an Orwellian society?
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the problem though is that we are what we are now, and a true conservative would make slow and incrimental changes away from it rather than the radical departures that we see from the Bush Administration (at least in their justifications rather than their actions).
Finally I would suggest that the problem is not with the political parties as a whole but with the structure of our government. In particular, the role of the President is as non-conservative a role as you can find-- the Presiden
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
By bombing Iran Bush and flagging the abortion and gay marriage issues the republicans will be assured of a win in the next election.
Nobody cares about the size of the govt. The republican party has a sure fire button to push with their electorate who are much more alarmed with homosexual "rights" then the size of the govt.
Re:Worrisome (Score:4, Interesting)
There will not be any attempt at occupation, even bush knows by now that's a bad idea. There will be lot of killing and destruction though, we like that.
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
Suggestion for you. Modify to:
Government should only...
(FWIW, my take on physical infrastructure is communications, roads, airlanes, waterways, distribution mechanisms for heat and power.)
(Note that I define theft as physica
Re:Worrisome (Score:3, Insightful)
liberalization of handling of illegal aliens
Did you mean Get hispanics to Vote Republican?
China - you are WAY behind (Score:4, Interesting)
wow, and I mean just fucking WOW at the processing power alone.
This thing makes echelon look like a toy.
Since I live in the UK, this kind of technology is likely to be used here as well (since we have mandated supreme data retention laws)
This is truly scary
Re:China - you are WAY behind (Score:2)
Echelon is a probably a codename for a project which probably includes a lot of machines such as this.
It is quite interesting to see the technology behind echelon be brought into the public eye.
Re:China - you are WAY behind (Score:2)
Could someone explain to me what is so amazing about a system that pushes through 10 Gbit per second ?
Yes, it is a lot - but not impossible or even very expensive. Split this up into 30 1 Gbit lines, stick a $2000 dual-core Athlons on the end of each and you get a $60K cluster that has a budget of 118 64-bit instructions per byte that comes in. Plenty enough to examine packet headers. If you need mo
What really bothers me (Score:3, Insightful)
We've all heard the saying: "Two wrongs don't make a right". Hasn't the Bush adminstration?
The United States is a nation of LAWS...So many of you constantly remind us of that fact whenever p2p is mentioned here...yet many of these same people believe that our President has the right to IGNORE laws he doesn't want to follow.Why
Two words. (Score:5, Insightful)
A democratic government is supposed to have limited power by design. However, as they grow, they tend to cut themselves free of the shackles that their founders placed on them.
If you're going to be suprised about anything, be suprised that it didn't happen sooner.
Re:Two words. (Score:2)
Re:Two words. (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracies fall because the public can be bribed.
Parliamentary governments fall because they either devolve into democracies, or they appoint a dictator because they can't get anything done.
Our constitutional republic is structured so that state governments have broader areas of control than the national government[1], but those walls have been broken down. Once it was discovered that, even though it's technically easier to influence state policy, pandering and political acts are more effective and visible at the national level the fight against constitutional restrictions began in true.
If we fall, it will be either because we have created a dictatorship or a democracy at the national level.
I believe the cure isn't better policies at the national level, it's the reaffirmation of the power of the states.
Unfortunately, a quick look at how many public-interest causes primarily lobby at the national level versus the state level is rather disenheartening.[2]
Though all may not be lost - as ideologues and ninnies have controlled the federal government, it has set up an antagonism with state and city governments. The recent movement (largely symbolic) by states and cities to forbid police cooperation with the USAPATRIOT act and - even more promising - with some aspects of the drug war[3], and issuing proclamations condemning national acts...well, it's heartening.
[1] - it's worth noting that corruption at the state and city level is many times worse than the wet dreams of the federal congress.
[2] - I don't have any direct numbers here - going off memory and a survey of some causes that I know. If anyone has better numbers....
[3] - Several states (California among them, I believe) have forbidden their officers from providing support to the DEA in drug raids. Some have done this for cannabis, as they have medical marijuana laws. Others have done it for financial reasons.
Learning to love big brother;) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised that you haven't been modded flamebait already by the (guess who!) fascists. I'm glad you weren't modded down, because you are 100% correct.
I understand those of you who are in denial, however. The idea that America is slowly going fascist is a big, painful pill to swallow. However, the fact remains that corporations have unprecedented control of our society, and our government. Corporations are the primary institution of our time, just as capitalism is primary ideology (not democracy, that's for sure. How often do you vote? How often do you shop? Compare.) of 21st century America. Add to this unfortunate mix the shadow government in the form of the Military-Industrial Complex [wikipedia.org], and you have a recipe for the hidden hand of fascism.
I leave you with a quote from Mussolini:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:2)
"There's a word for that system of government: Fascism."
Fascism is a power-triangle between the military, politicians, and an aristocracy. It was a Roman invention - Rome was a fascist state. The Germans added racial components, some romantic fairytales, and voila -- nazism.
The complete melding of corporations and government is the definition of communism.
Surely you did not mean to mislead us (?).
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:2)
Re:Learning to love big brother;) (Score:2)
We here at AT&T prefer to use the term: "Pervasively Administered Law and Order Regimes, with Ongoing Profitable Public/Private Synergistic Relationships"
Let's translate in understandable metrics shall we (Score:5, Funny)
That's 1192MB/s, not exactly what I'd call enough to monitor the entire innurnet in real time, which means somewhere along the way, AT+T must be doing some filtering, which is even sadder.
On the other hand, that's roughly 2 CD-sized full-length movies a second, so that's about 2 hours worth of pr0n per second, which means that it takes a stadium packed with 7200 naked NSA agents and a truck full of Kleenex tissues to check out all the videos in real-time...
Let's translate into poetry. (Score:2)
I
We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!/ Our dried voices, when/ We whisper together/ Are quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass/ Or rats' feet over broken glass/ In our dry cellar/
[Slashdot complained about too few characters to per line so some is reformatted]
Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed fo
Re:Let's translate in understandable metrics shall (Score:2)
From what I have read in other articles, there are rooms at other sites that also do this monitoring. So even though the single installation isn't fast enough to monitor in real-time, collectively it would certainly be powerful to monitor AT&T's part of it in real time.
Re:Let's translate in understandable metrics shall (Score:3, Insightful)
which means that it takes a stadium packed with 7200 naked NSA agents and a truck full of Kleenex tissues to check out all the videos in real-time...
Thanks for the image.
Where's the source? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where's the source? (Score:3, Funny)
Conversation I overheard in a bar (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that "free to dissent" doesn't appear in that list.
Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Conversation I overheard in a bar (Score:3, Insightful)
Impressive, but AT&T can bite me (Score:5, Interesting)
Screw AT&T. They aren't going to get my companies money, and I expect that I'm not the only one who is going to ditch them.
They should be sued into oblivion.
Re:Impressive, but AT&T can bite me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Impressive, but AT&T can bite me (Score:2)
Re:Impressive, but AT&T can bite me (Score:2, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with HE. I am simply a satisfied customer.
what about encryption and VPNs (Score:2, Insightful)
Employment on the NSA (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nsa.gov/careers/ [nsa.gov] has links to all the areas. The only thing I found extraordinarily interesting is that computer programming type skills (ie Software Engineering) is more under the Computer Engineering/Electrical engineering career track than the computer science one.
The only question is that if you should decide to leave the NSA or are fired, does termination extend to more than your employment? Although seriously it does seem like a very geek friendly place to work.
Re:Employment on the NSA (Score:2)
Re:Employment on the NSA (Score:2)
Does this mean you are the one who makes all the gadgets that James Bond destroys?
Re:Employment on the NSA (Score:2)
It's just like fight club.
Re:NGO Intelligence disAgency (Score:2)
One such organization is the Int
Tor (Score:3, Informative)
It can be a little slow at times, but you do not need to use it all the time (unless you are very paranoid).
Mandatory link (Score:2)
next frontier (Score:5, Interesting)
Since most of the land in the world is claimed by less than free governments, I'm wondering if the next frontier in freedom needs to be sea based. I suppose for the next few decades people can probably use technologies to secure their freedoms, crypto, open source, etc..., but that won't get arround the physical controll problem. Eventually people will need to physically secure their freedoms.
Maybe the solution is for a bunch of liberty minded people to collaberate together to take controll of a small despot country, but that still would make it very vulnerable to larger military powers. Moving to more free states, juridistictions, and countries would probably help, but doen't seem like a permanent solution. Maybe it would be possible to convince all the freedom hating overloards to go somewhere else, but that seems unlikely too.
Re:next frontier (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:next frontier (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you mean something like this [freedomship.com]?
The problem with any sovereign nation, especially one at sea is the dependence on external resources. Just ask Japan how it goes.
I do think this is a cool idea, there is plenty of water given desalinization, and if you have a small nuclear reactor on board, you can generate heat and electricity for 15 years per refit. But food? Granted you can grow your own hydroponics, but for the number of people they are talking about, the infrastructure would be quite large.
Re:next frontier (Score:2)
No, thanks, starting a new country on this planet is quite impossible
That shit gets done all the time. Israel, iraq, the US, N/S Korea, N/S vietnam...etc.
Seasteading (Score:2)
One. Encryption, lots of it, with lots of people using it.
Two. Build a wireless network that never touches wire, a separate internet, if you will.
Better Privacy Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
There are strict laws governing snail mail to protect against this very abuse we're seeing, among others. Imagine if companies, and the government, were able to know every bit of content in your snail mail? Would you be comfortable with that? What if every bit of your communication is available to the highest bidder? (a possible outcome of all this if something isn't done now)
Change the laws! Why is this information not as important as the stuff that goes on paper? Apply the same mindset that we have with the mail system towards internet traffic. I'd be fine if they recorded traffic's origin and destination, but they shouldn't lawfully have access to the *content* of my correspondence.
Technology is only going to make this oversight easier and easier. We have to educate people and change attitudes starting now.
Watergate (Score:5, Insightful)
Another interesting read. (Score:5, Informative)
Before there was terror, there was greed (Score:4, Insightful)
Back then they were talking about how wonderful it was to spy on everyone so some internet traffic could be charged a higher rate to be passed along.
Nearer the top of the page it mentions that previous to September 11, 2001 they wanted to analyze everything to prevent "revenue leakage", which I take to be the industry term of art meaning "a failure to exploit loopholes and monopolies to screw everyone out of every last penny".
Now they can be greedy and "patriotic".
1984 is not a howto! (Score:5, Funny)
What I'd be interested in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Running a packet-oriented grep on a large datastream is not that hard (ie. easily solvable if you throw enough processing power at it). If the government's sniffers can reassemble packets and recover flows real-time, *then* worry.
EFF and Narus Met Back in 2001 Just After 9/11 (Score:3, Interesting)
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:nc4cgqbKTjoJ:
The article appears to be a lead in for a round table discussion where both the EFF and Narus participated but I can not find the details of the conversation. Anyone else able to get their hand on it? Please post it to slashdot.
Was J. Edgar Hoover really a transvestite? (Score:2)
Narus STA 6400 - Missing web page (Score:4, Interesting)
This page has dissapeared from the server and it can't be found in google cache. Does anyone know much about this model? What sort of processing power is behind it and what are it's capabilities? It looks to have the ability to sniff through 600 mbps each up and downstream from the snippet above, but little else is known.
Also, only this first google result seems to have relevant info on this device. If anyone here has more info, please post. A lot of us are curious, especially considering that the administration has been saying they only sniffed suspicious communications.
Re:Narus STA 6400 - Missing web page (Score:2)
Ori Cohen, "33-year-old Israeli Immigrant" (Score:5, Informative)
Why am I not surprised?
First, an Israeli company in charge of Federal wiretapping gets caught selling wiretapping info to drug dealers in LA and the FBI gets upset over their access to Federal wiretaps.
Now this - an NSA guy and an Israeli running the company sucking data into the NSA - and the Mossad?
As I've said before, Israel has figured out that the best way to spy on people is to be the country making all the telecommo hardware and software all the other countries use to spy on people. Brilliant strategy - and it's working.
What are U worried About? (Score:3, Insightful)
100 Revolution
200 Citizens get peacetime
300 Citizens get stupid and complacent
400 Givernment Goons get the upper hand
500 People die, people get upset
600 Government gets out of control
700 goto 100
-Hackus
Where's the Mainstream Media Coverage? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One engineer's complaint is all it's based on.. (Score:2)
[Translation for any partisan astroturfers paid to post here: slashdotters know that engineers often understand reality on the ground much better than the suits.]
an acquiescent people have given it up. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the big picture, an individual's personal porn preferences is not the problem.
The problem is that all legitimate American governmental power flows directly from the Constitution, and all elected Federal Politicians, as well as all appointed Federal judges have solemnly sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Amendments to the Constitution:
Re:OC-192 (Score:2)
622 Mb/sec = Narus ST-6400
10,000 Mb/sec = NarusInsight
And because someone mentioned OC192 speed, what TFA actually says is
I don't know enough about networking hardware to say if that's a >/=/ normal performance hit.
And uh, if you have to ask
Re:Spelling Nazi, sorry (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Spelling Nazi, sorry (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Spelling Nazi, sorry (Score:2)
What about spelling Republicanism rather than spelling Nazism? I think your spelling of 'insightful' deserves a good dose of that even if it isn't quite heinous enough to deserve Nazism. (Spelling Republicanism typically involves being incarcerated on property leased from foreign countries with all of your rights suspended. But it doesn't involve things like getting
Re:To look at it another way... (Score:4, Insightful)
When a country is run by psychopathic liars who steal elections through rigged voting machines and who abuse the laws to ensure their continued control over the public, their enemies ARE the people.
-FL
OSI v. TCP/IP (Score:3, Interesting)
TCP/IP operates on a 4-layer model, while the OSI protocols operate on a 7-layer model. As the OSI model started loosing brainshare, people tried to market it as a teaching tool (or vice versa).
OSI protocols seem really weird and complicated when implimented on TCP/IP. You have all sorts of things that have to be emulated
Re:OSI v. TCP/IP (Score:2)
Re:If you are not plotting anything illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
And for some follow-up reading: U.S. Constitution, Amend. 4
Re:Glad their monitoring terrorists (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the people that criticize Bush now will be the first to criticise him if there's another attack. Why do you think they'd do anything diff