How AT&T Helped the NSA Snoop
Ryan Singel has himself a big, fat scoop. We already knew that telecom companies were cooperating with the NSA to eavesdrop on domestic and international communications. Now, Ryan reveals how it was done.
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...
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls...
"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets."
UPDATE 04/10/06 9:10 AM: Lots more on Naurus' data-sniffing products here, including one "capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second."
Hmm. Risking lives in exchange for pure entertainment? (pedestrian's comment). There's nothing entertaining about having the government breath down your neck. For decades we've heard of the secret government tapes that turn on if you whisper code words like "kill bush" or "Cheney is a big fat weeny". Now we are told that wire tapping is alive and rampant and backed by one of the biggest phone companies. On one hand, if you're doing nothing wrong, who cares what they're listening to, but on the other hand, why do I have to conduct every conversation with the implicit knowledge that somebody or some robot is listening to my every word, every nuance, and categorizing every number and time of call? They most likely aren't categorizing your grandma's banana bread recipe, but they are recording it in the first place. Maybe they can use the information for marketing purposes: Osama's Baked Banana Bread Surprise. Oh—ha—what a funny joke.
Posted by: jlbellinger at April 20, 2006 8:02 PM