4 ms·

I worked at a mid-size MSP some years back, and their datacenter had a room only the three letter agency folks could access. While it was never explicitly arti

I worked at a mid-size MSP some years back, and their datacenter had a room only the three letter agency folks could access. While it was never explicitly articulated, the belief was that the room was filled with the gear they were using to suck up whatever communications they deemed interesting and worthy of snooping. As far as I know, no warrant, subpoena or other formal request for such was ever issued. At some point, the Internet becomes a tool for surveillance above all, and only by building from the ground up for privacy, can we hope to use it as a tool for anything other than propaganda, advertising and oppression.

meepmorp 3y ago
> As far as I know, no warrant, subpoena or other formal request for such was ever issued. Ok, but otoh, if you aren't involved in handling warrants, why would anyone tell you anything about it? Aren't those things under seal sometimes? Especially for wiretaps?
- nyc_data_geek1 3y ago
  Yes, this is true, and I was not in a position of needing to know, so likely wouldn't have been privy. This is also what warrant canaries are for.
bamfly 3y ago
There are allusions in open sources (e.g. the Afghanistan Papers—a series of interviews the government conducted to perform a "WTF went wrong" appraisal of the war in and occupation of Afghanistan, that has since been released to the public) to some agencies having free (as in, unrestricted, not gratis—I expect the arrangement involves money changing hands) access to customer data & activity at several major telcos. I'd be very surprised if none of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Apple have similar arrangements with them, these days. I'd also be surprised if all of them have such arrangements, but I doubt none of them do.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > as in, unrestricted, not gratis Like a dark twist on the open-source saying: "Free as in weapons-free, not free as in beer."

meepmorp 3y ago

> As far as I know, no warrant, subpoena or other formal request for such was ever issued. Ok, but otoh, if you aren't involved in handling warrants, why would anyone tell you anything about it? Aren't those things under seal sometimes? Especially for wiretaps?

nyc_data_geek1 3y ago
Yes, this is true, and I was not in a position of needing to know, so likely wouldn't have been privy. This is also what warrant canaries are for.

bamfly 3y ago

There are allusions in open sources (e.g. the Afghanistan Papers—a series of interviews the government conducted to perform a "WTF went wrong" appraisal of the war in and occupation of Afghanistan, that has since been released to the public) to some agencies having free (as in, unrestricted, not gratis—I expect the arrangement involves money changing hands) access to customer data & activity at several major telcos. I'd be very surprised if none of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Apple have similar arrangements with them, these days. I'd also be surprised if all of them have such arrangements, but I doubt none of them do.

Terr_ 3y ago
> as in, unrestricted, not gratis Like a dark twist on the open-source saying: "Free as in weapons-free, not free as in beer."