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AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA
- zmblum 16y agoWhat about the following paragraph is not clear? "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 Warrants shall not be issued, 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." Am I missing something? Of course the problem is that it's near impossible get something like this to the SCOTUS. The only real possibility is more whistle blowing.
- rdtsc 16y agoThat is written for you to learn in 5th grade civics class and feel good about your country and your government. But is not for those printing & spending hundreds of billions of dollars.
- dustingetz 16y agowell, no, that was written by government leaders attempting to protect civil liberties from future government leaders. It just didn't work.
- tesseract 16y agoOh? I thought it was written by a bunch of guys (these days we'd probably call them "insurgents" or somesuch) who had recently been fed up with a government that was unreasonably searching them, etc., and didn't want it to happen again.
- itistoday 16y agoI'm not sure why people are upvoting your comment. Actually, I do know why. It's a depressing disenchantment with government. They don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad. The quote zmblum posted is brilliant, and it is an example of what Good Government is capable of. It is not just for your 5th grade civics class. It's for RIGHT NOW. Read the quote, understand and respect it and its authors, and take action. The government is not just them, it's also you, and sitting on the sidelines being cynical is supporting them.
- carussell 16y agoTongue-in-cheek.
- CamperBob 16y agoThey don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad. No way in hell. Where, in either the future or the history books, is the saintly leader who will counterbalance a Stalin or a Mao?
- mrgordon 16y agoGandhi?
- pyre 16y agoI think the point is government that is not necessarily led by a single person. Though the president of the US is the 'leader,' he does share power with the Supreme Court and Congress. Just because everyone likes to point to the president when things go wrong doesn't mean there aren't others that share in the blame... The current problem with the system is that: 1) the Federal government has grown too large, and 2) the US is ruled by only two political parties that are both (at their core) about the status quo and not all that different from each other.
- intended 16y agoMay I suggest that the current US political debate is virulently polarizing and unproductive? Perhaps the issue Good Governance vs Bad Governance would be effective/useful? (as opposed to the current axis of big vs small) As was said by Deng Xiapong "it doesn't matter if the cat is white or black.."
- randallsquared 16y agoJoe's Good Governance is Bob's Bad Governance. People fundamentally differ on what the government should do; there's no "right answer" that everyone could agree on if only they'd sit down and discuss it reasonably.
- sixtofour 16y agoYes, you're missing something (actually I'm sure you're not). The government has evolved to a state where they've decided they can do anything, anything they want, in the name of whatever they want to use for justification, in the rare case where they deign to justify. They're not afraid of terror or drugs, they aren't afraid of anything.
- getsat 16y agoThe authors of the Federalist Papers were against a specific enumeration of rights because they feared that those would become the only rights that citizens had. They now seem prescient in retrospect.
- hammock 16y agoThe Bill of Rights was horrible for America. It turned the Constitution from something where the people tells the government what it can and can't do, into something where the government tells people what bones they get thrown.
- watchandwait 16y agoI don't think that's fair. Sure, the Constitution is in tatters but without the Bill of Rights I think we'd have lost even more freedom. At least folks have rallied around and protected some elements (guns, religious freedom, free speech to some degree).
- thwarted 16y agoIn some sense, the Bill of Rights could be considered a premature optimization. Rather than waste time having the people and the government come to an agreement in an agile way, through multiple iterations, on the things the first 10 amendments cover, they just decided to preempt all that debate and bill-making and bill-overturning and list the things that were off-limits. Didn't turn out that way though. And like all premature optimizations, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.
- hammock 16y agoThe problem with the Bill of Rights is that it refocuses grievances from "where do you, the government derive the power to do such things?" to "what fundamental citizen right is being violated in this case?" Which sounds OK but it's just wrong. The latter question is relevant in terms of inter-citizen disputes like theft, but in terms of government intervention the former is the appropriate one. Unfortunately it's usually the latter that gets asked.
- rst 16y agoIt doesn't say a thing about "electronic communications". Which gives prosecutors, the FBI, and the national security state a large opportunity to blow smoke.
- tesseract 16y agoDifficulty of amending the US constitution is a double edged sword.
- pyre 16y agoThat paragraph was written before 9/11. Everything is different now. </sarcasm>
- VladRussian 16y agoLets look into the precedents. Modern interpretation used by courts is that automated weapons didn't exist when 2nd Amendment was written. The same way it will be with email didn't exist back then. It doesn't matter that rifles of the time were the assault weapons of the time and the meaning of "papers" of the time can be extended to email.
- cjeane 16y agoThe key here is that the data is obtained via a 3rd party. Once you as an individual share any information with a 3rd party you lose any expectation of privacy. In the digital world there are specific carve outs for email, but not much else. These actions are terrible, but completely legal.
- jodrellblank 16y agoI see the bits about your house, person, papers and effects, but which part covers a datacenter?
- drivebyacct2 16y agoThis is literally years-old information. I was aware of and hollering about this at people as a highschooler at debate and speech tournaments. Same thing then as now, no one cares, or those that do care don't care enough. Besides, who cares if you have nothing to hide. Right?
- rdtsc 16y agoI knew about it too and I am always baffled at the general population's indifference to it. I guess when you are in debt, about to lose your house, your job, your health insurance, you don't really give a crap if Uncle Sam looks through your emails ... ?
- rapind 16y agoActually I think it might be when you start to care. When everything's going great you generally don't rock the boat. If everything's going down the tubes though, people get uppity. I.e. We start to examine what it is we love so much about our country and maybe even demand change (ok, maybe I'm getting a little carried away with the whole demand change thing).
- davidandgoliath 16y agoUnderstand that a lack of privacy isn't a problem until it's a problem, e.g. someone has something against you and needs something to wield against you. The government & large corps. will happily use propaganda against you, and it's easier for them to find dirt on you with little to no privacy. Think of it this way, the average person has something in their past they're probably not happy about that could be misused against them in a political way, if say, they ever wanted to be involved in politics. Enemies will use this, and enemies now have all of the data they want.
- positr0n 16y agoHonest question: do you really think they store every piece of communication that flows through the internet, just waiting for some random teenager they spied on to run for president? The way I imagine it the data runs through a lot of filters that look for evil words/phrases/whatever. Those few emails/sms/etc will be stored and sent to NSA analysts. I doubt they care about the usual type of "dirt" you use against people. I am against the illegal spying, but what you're saying seems like a conspiracy theory.
- akent 16y agoNo big surprise here really. So when are we all going to get serious and start using public key cryptography on a mass scale, even if we "don't have anything to hide"?
- bpd1069 16y agoMake it easy and you 'may' just make it happen. ;)
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoI'm working on it (seriously :).
- cookiecaper 16y agoWell, we have that to the degree most people need it with SSL. Private correspondence doesn't work that way yet because webmail clients don't support it.
- foobarbazetc 16y agoThis happens in every single "free" country. People should care, but no one does.
- kjksf 16y agoIn which other countries, exactly, does that happen? UK? Canada? Sweden?
- thematt 16y agoActually, yes...all those minus Sweden. The US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all cooperate together. See the Ecehlon program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence...
- Joakal 16y agoOddly enough, I hear rumours that it's a spy program on businesses, not people.
- ceejayoz 16y agoSpying on businesses generally involves spying on their people.
- cpach 16y agoThe Swedish state has been engaged in widespread wiretapping for many years. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
- JonnieCache 16y ago>Echelon Get with the programme ;) The new hotness in european wiretapping is called the INDECT project. Here's a presentation from CCC where a representative of one of the firms contracted to build it gets into an argument with the assembled hackers during the Q&A. It's pretty entertaining. http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2010/27c3-4237-en-indect_eu_surveillance_project.html http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2010/27c3-4237-en-indect...
- rbranson 16y agoSo? This isn't the equivalent to papers secured in your household, it's data sent over someone else's network. I'm not a huge fan, but saying it's the same as the government walking into your house and examining all your documents is ridiculous. Either way, call me when someone finds out they can decrypt and examine all the SSL traffic in real-time.
- kjksf 16y agoIt is, however, the same as government opening and reading all of the mail you send through the post office. And that government cannot do.
- rbranson 16y agoThat's only even a problem if they target you. Danger comes when they can target everyone simultaneously and use automated means to find those who match their profile as enemies of an agenda.
- rosser 16y agoIsn't that pretty much what they're doing here?
- halfasleep 16y ago>Even if you're completely awesome and use SSL everything (like, say, Gmail), eventually that e-mail you sent is going to find its way from Google's servers to its final destination. That, with almost no exception, is plaintext. Gmail sends mail out using TLS where available (though I agree with your point).
- getsat 16y ago1) http://www.google.com/search?q=sslstrip http://www.google.com/search?q=sslstrip 2) Do you think every CA with a cert on your system is incapable of being bullied by the US government?
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- hparra 16y agoThat is the meanest-looking bird I have ever seen.
- hparra 16y agoOriginal image available through EFF's flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hughelectronic/3531668253/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/hughelectronic/3531668253/
- fingerprinter 16y agoOne thing I see people saying on here is that people should care....and I do...but I don't know _what_ to do with it! Can someone show/tell me what I, an average person, can do? It feels a bit overwhelming and things like this point out how powerless we really are. I hope I'm wrong and there are things we can do...I just don't know what they are. EDIT - Asking two more specific questions: 1. What can we do technically to be safe? 2. What can we do to fight this? Petition Government? Support EFF? Other? Very much at a loss on #2
- fugue88 16y agoWe could use GPG for normal e-mail correspondence. But I really don't know if this would do anything more than delay any problems. In a similar vein, I've deleted all the trusted root CA certs from my computer, and am now marking individual certs trusted as I hit them. Not fail-safe, but safer, I think.
- HelloBeautiful 16y agoHaha, this doesn't make any sense. How can you possibly know the real cert from the one generated by NSA?
- fugue88 16y agoGreat question! Unfortunately, I don't think you can. If you use CA certs to trust site certs, the site certs can change on the fly (i.e. be replaced with an NSA interloper) without you knowing. If you kill your CA certs, and mark individual sites trusted, than at least your browser will notify you if the site's cert has changed since you lasted trusted it. Theoretically. I haven't actually tested this yet. :(
- kronusaturn 16y agoCall them on the phone and ask them to read you their cert fingerprint. Or use this: http://www.networknotary.org/firefox.html http://www.networknotary.org/firefox.html
- tlrobinson 16y agoAnyone else find it weird that Google Maps shows 611 Folsom Street as "Jesus Christ My Lord & Savior Church"...?
- biot 16y agoFurther down the block and across the street we have 666 Folsom Street, where the actual AT&T interconnect happens.
- code_duck 16y agoThis has been going on with pretty much every ISP for over a decade, hasn't it? Carnivore - rather, DCS-1000?
- radicaldreamer 16y agoThere were a series of disruptions to fiber coming out of the middle east and north africa a few years ago that is probably connected to the same program. (http://goo.gl/apasy http://goo.gl/apasy)
- daniel1980fl 16y agoI remember reading that long time ago. It actually made me quit AT&T and every time someone called me, I tend to ask or check their number and tell them you calling me from AT&T do you know about "the room"? Couple times my friends quit it for the same reason; others don't care. I guess the answer is switch to a different career. I had a good laugh when I read (think it was Wikipedia) about that room. AT&T was sued over it... they defends themselves by 1) the room does not exist AND 2) this lawsuit should not be proceed due to Act of National Security setting aside lawsuit frames. LOOL! I dont know about you -- but to me first contradicts the second one :)) the judge only decided on count 2) -- that it is indeed NSA involved - so it was dismissed, but if there is NSA then the room exists, hahahaha!!
- fooandbarify 16y agoI think it's reasonable to assume that every North American (and European, etc) carrier does this, so quitting AT&T won't help much. I'm sure there are many other good reasons to leave them, though.
- michaeldhopkins 16y agoYou're DFL? I think I know you. You were at Summer School, right?
- juancferrer 16y agoIs this why the at&t+T-Mobile merger is being approved?
- ascendant 16y agoI'm willing to bet that any anti-trust issues that are brought up will be quietly squashed in the name of (A) campaign contributions and (B) increasing the size of the AT&T dragnet.
- sabat 16y ago... but corporations are A-OK. It's the government that's the problem. Right?
- spindritf 16y agoActually, yes. Corporations are A-moral and the government is the problem. Just look where this traffic is allegedly going.
- sabat 16y agoCorporations run the government. Don't forget that.
- Semiapies 16y agoUsual pattern: 1) Massive government abuse 2) "Look, over there, corporations!" It doesn't even matter that a company is involved. AT&T could go out of business tomorrow, and the government would lean on someone else to give them what they want.
- sabat 16y agoIt's actually the opposite: 1) massive corporate abuse, 2) "Look, over there, the GOVERNMENT!" (which received its direction from behemoth corporations). AT&T will not go out of business tomorrow. "The government", as you know it, will go. At least it's made of elected officials. Peons don't elect or have any control over large corporations.
- btipling 16y agoOh hey Reddit...uh...I mean Hacker News.
- ascendant 16y agoYour liberties and freedoms, especially as they relate to the digital medium and AT&T in particular is very relevant for everyone, including hackers, designers and entrepreneurs.
- molecule 16y ago2005 called, it wants its news back. Call recorded by NSA.
- whimsymachine 16y agoWhat you can do: 1. Support the EFF, CDT and other orgs that work on technology and civil liberties. 2. For truly private data and activity get religion with PGP, TrueCrypt, Tor and other tools. For the non-private stuff, take some sensible measures (see below) 3. Consider sandboxing/compartmentalizing your online activity across disparate ids, browsers, machines, phones and locations. Definitely run Ad Blockers/Filters. 4. Stay current with EFF/CDT and related twitter feeds. There will be another privacy debate at a policy level. Get educated, push for the good guys. Here's an overview resource: http://amzn.to/etLNze http://amzn.to/etLNze Mark was given an award by the EFF a couple of years ago for his bravery.
- anacrolix 16y agoWho cares? You're not doing anything of interest anyway.
- ck2 16y agoJust imagine what Google has splitting to the NSA. The question is does Google give them raw data or pre-process it willingly for them?
- AbyCodes 16y agoWatch Nova - The Spy Factory ( S36 E11 ). Nova investigated the National Security Agency, and what led to AT&T do what it is doing today and why.
- slug 16y agoThere's also a nice book about it (The Shadow Factory by James Bamford): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95689436 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9568943...
- dan0 16y agoNot surprised.
- trotsky 16y ago2012 secure communication: handwritten note tucked into some junk sent airmail
- spaznode 16y agoAT&T isn't the only one to do this. So long as it isn't used against citizens in criminal trials/etc I don't really care all that much if it helps make intelligence people more efficient.
- dwiel 16y agoHow would you know that it isn't being used that way? Even if the evidence isn't being used directly at trial, it could sure be used to help 'guess' when a good time to stake out someone's house might be.
- spaznode 16y agoYeah, but if most of the world is doing this wouldn't we be losing a vital ability to "protect and insure interests" of country? In the real honest way and not patriot act bs. Maybe you guys are just clueless about us having real enemies out there or something. No fucking way is FBI or local law enforcement going to be granted anything from NSA for shit. Because it's unlawful.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- shareme 16y agoNot the first time US gov has violated US Constitution to spy on citizens.. People forget that the US President that first set a policy for this type of illegal behavior was Roosevelt leading up to WWII. Cable/Wireless companies were pressured by US Gov to record and copy cables sent by US citizens and to send those copies to the US government. Did not stop terrorism than will not stop it now..and yet 70 years later and no one has learned.
- colanderman 16y agoQuestion: which major carrier(s) are not known (or known not) to do this? T-Mobile supposedly had little evidence against them, but they're being assimilated.
- totalforge 16y agoThe NSA are drowning in data. They have a constantly changing target list from the other intelligence agencies, and whatever crisis is, or will soon be in the news is keeping them quite busy. They really have more important things to do than monitor the geeks. Unless you come up with some nifty new crypto. p.s. SPLITTER!
- leot 16y agoThe argument that there is some steady march toward tyranny and erosion in our freedoms would make sense if it weren't for the fact that these programs have existed in one form or another since WWII (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)). Furthermore, when, exactly, were the good ol' days, those days from which we are presumably descending into tyranny, when we (all, not just white folk) were truly "free"?
- forgottenpaswrd 16y agoToday a big computer room could transcribe the entire telephone communications of all America, and store it for later view. You can use computers to search for whatever pattern you want in milisecons. I think this makes it different from the past.
- jdavid 16y agoThe problem is that privacy is no longer the default. So instead of having it, now you don't and you have to prove why you need it. I think that's kinda why the constitution set the default to innocent. Too bad we don't really see that as necessary any more.
- linuxhansl 16y agoThis is why I donate money to the EFF and the ACLU.
- judegomila 16y agoI was walking past the building wondering why they had .mil style no windows for such a large building. Other exchanges I had visited had windows. If we had collectively given the NSA rights to check our data, this would be ok. We didn't give them the rights. Think of the insider trading, that could be occurring by corrupt NSA officials.
- danbmil99 16y agoAnd there's gambling in Casablanca!