comments on the thread after Yglesias' main post are interesting,

as there's one NSA supporter prepared to blast away poorly expressed
opposition remarks, among other things:-)

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

As I understand those cryptonyms, Hayden was testifying about projects that primarily have to do with managing the huge reams of data NSA collects, not collection itself. I think he's talking about data mining within NSA's own data repositories - big difference between that and saying that they're data mining through call records (they are, of course, but in this instance I don't think Hayden was saying what s/he thinks he said).

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

is worth quoting from more explicitly. I've been reading into the capabilities of the NARUS machines that the government installed into AT&T's central hubs. The threat is not being exaggerated here.

How 1984 works in 2006 - Wiretapping Unveiled

by dhomyak

Wed May 10, 2006 at 08:50:17 PM PDT

Why can't the DOJ learn about the NSA's wiretapping program? Why hasn't anyone in the Congress or Senate actually been fully briefed? Because the truth would change the world, just like the impact on religions of the world if a deity walked the planet.

Imagine KNOWING beyond a doubt that there is NO digital privacy. Not even encrypted or SSL communications. Not even private business channels on high speed communication highways -- the ones companies and governments pay dearly for. Well that's what the NSA has implemented.

Here's how -

=Narus ST-6400 and NarusInsight by Narus Ltd.

Under Gen. Michael V. Hayden the NSA has forced tecom companies to implement massive domestic spying hardware. Even though Gen. Hayden has said at the National Press Club that "As the director, I was the one responsible to ensure that this program was limited in its scope and disciplined in its application." The NarusInsight is one type of domestic spying hardware. Capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second in real-time. This means the NarusInsight can monitor an OC-192 in realtime. For reference 10 billion bits is 10 million Kbts, divide that by the average DSL user witch is 256 Kbts (10000000/256) you get monitoring of 39062.5 DSL lines in realtime for every piece of hardware. After data capture Narus softeware can replay data. What does this mean well acrodding too Narus website "Capabilities include playback of streaming media (for example, VoIP), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols." Think of it as Tivo for the internet able to replay 39000 US DSL users activity in realtime for every piece of hardware.

References:

Narus Ltd http://narus.com

Essentially with a product like Narus attached to a big digital pipe, you can see everything at any level of detail, store it, and play it back at will.

So you go to their website and who do you find offers add on services?  Well none other than Verisign.  That name might be familiar to you if you have ever purchased anything on the internet.  "Protected By Verisign".

Why should I care you ask?  Read the fine print in the article to see what a full range of "services" they offer.

VeriSign will first use Narus LI for IP lawful intercept, but the company also has the right to outsource NarusSecure, NarusAnalyze and NarusMediate IP security and management software elements.

Carriers, many of whom are just starting in IP telephony, will be able to outsource their lawful intercept responsibilities to VeriSign which, in turn, will use Narus' licensed software to work with law enforcement agencies in tapping IP phone calls.

"They (carriers) get a warrant from the government ... but they don't really want to do it themselves. Now they have an opportunity to turn to one of the most trusted security brands in the world and have those folks do it as a managed service for them," said Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing at Narus. "VeriSign goes through all the machinations of capturing the information and providing it to law enforcement."

The machinations are not only capture, and provision, but decryption. See Verisign holds the keys to the encryption kingdom.

Ah but what telecom carriers would allow such unlimited access to the US Government.  Well the ones that want to keep their licenses.  Here's a sample of their predicament.

Hayden did the research years ago, to head off the government's inability to see into the big fiber optic pipes and quickly realized it was a tall task, until he was handed an opportunity.  The largest provider of fiber optic capacity on Earth Global Crossing went bankrupt.  Can't have that happen can we, especially when they carry so much secure traffic for the US Government.  What an opportunity to test the data collection technology from vendors like Narus.  Not to mention adding virtually every important fiber optic connection point in the world to the NSA's visible world.  A match made in heaven.

So in rush foreign investors from China, but wait, Singapore (can't have the Chinese mafia so close to our technology) and here's the price they pay to play --

Network Security Agreement

On September 23, 2003, the U.S. Government granted approval under Section 721 of the Defense Production Act of the investment in GCL by Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte Ltd ("ST Telemedia") pursuant to the GC Debtors? plan of reorganization. In order to obtain this approval, we entered into anagreement (the "Network Security Agreement") with certain agencies of the U.S. Government to address the U.S. Government's national security and law enforcement concerns. The Network Security Agreement is intended to ensure that our operations do not impair the U.S. Government's ability (1) to carry out

lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance of communications that originate and/or terminate in the U.S.; (2) to prevent and detect foreign-based espionage and electronic surveillance of U.S. communications; and (3) to satisfy U.S. critical infrastructure protection requirements. Failure to comply with our obligations under the Network Security Agreement could result in the revocation of our telecommunications licenses by the Federal Communications Commission

("FCC").

And who oversees this ability?

The Network Security Agreement affects our corporate governance as well. The GCL Board of Directors maintains a Security Committee  comprised solely of directors who are U.S. citizens and who already possess or are eligible to  possess U.S. security clearance. These "Security Directors" must satisfy the independent director requirements of the New York Stock Exchange, regardless of  whether any of GCL's securities are listed on such  exchange. At least half of the members of the GCL  board nominated by ST Telemedia must be Security  directors. See Item 10 below. A Security Director must be present at every meeting of the board of directors of GCL and of any of our U.S. subsidiaries unless such meeting in no way addresses or affects our obligations under the Network Security Agreement.

Check out who these "overseers" are.  An Admiral, General and the Honorable Pete Aldridge, who to quote his bio:

From May 2001 until May 2003, Mr. Aldridge served as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. In this position, he was responsible for all matters relating to U.S. Department of Defense acquisition, research and development, advanced technology, international programs, and the industrial base.

The technology for lawful intercept.  Keep in mind that to George Bush it's ALL legal.  Never mind that with the Narus technology and Verisign to unlock it there is no secure communications of any kind: private, governmental (that's other governments traffic on these digital pipes) or business.  And like tapping into the results from the track, they can see news before it happens.  Can someone make money this way do you suppose?  Or secure their power through digital oppression?

When will someone really take notice?  

Welcome to Oceania.  George Orwell would be proud.

Just because it can see 1.25 gigabytes a second does not mean it can keep it for very long. That's a huge amount of data to record. I don't know of any way to do it. Even the biggest mainframe systems could not do it. They would have to record it on some media in real-time; unlikely to say the least.

Capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second in real-time.

... Essentially with a product like Narus attached to a big digital pipe, you can see everything at any level of detail, store it, and play it back at will.

I have no idea how to do that.

We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. - General Education Board Letter #1, 1906, Rockefeller Foundation.

who knows what percentage of that they're capturing and storing? I'm not sure that I'd be comforted by the thought that their only real restraint isn't the law but the "limits of available technology".

I design databases and storage architecture capable of storing 3 terabytes per hour, which is what this would stream at max capacity on an OC48. Likely they don't pull the full pipe load, and also that any formatting is done, just streaming. Backend processing would then be required for format and catalog in a really big database. Digital voice to text would dramatically reduce the overall storage requirements, which you can do during backend processing.

Very possible. I worked in retail several years in a performance lab on very large machines. This isn't rocket science anymore. RFID tracking in retail is quite similar in sheer volume of data. The hard part is getting the data to the central server for cataloging. Can be done on spare capacity real-time, or during non-peak hours. They only need about 100 terabytes locally at the point of presence, and this will fit in a single cabinet these days. They can transfer it to a central site at night if they want. So for two cabinets worth of floorspace they can monitor whatever they want in a telco central office, especially the ones they operate in the big hubs (Global Crossing's).

Here's more detail for those who asked:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/11/224653/800

The law here says that the operator has to store the emails two years.

The call data contains the location of the mobile too. But still, it is not very much data.

GSM speech coding is 13 kbit/s, says Wikipedia (but I remember that it can be packed down to 9.6 kbit/s). When somebody is speaking. One direction of course.

One hour of babbling between two persons would consume at most:
2*60*60*13 = 94 Mbit =12 MB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Station_Subsystem

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

I guesstimate the 100% electronic surveillance ability covers 1 M US citizens. This means the ability to record all their telephone conversations, surfing etc.

(Spying of the call records only of the remaining 287 millions is prevented only by outdated and still incompatible old technology in some places).

The ability to spy electronically everything grows 100% annually. It would take about 8-10 years to record, scan and store all the calls all the time in the US.

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

In February the EU finally approved a controversial rule forcing telephone companies to keep all phone and internet records for up to two years, ostensibly for the purpose of fighting organized crime and terrorists: 

The measures will require firms to store:

• data that can trace fixed or mobile telephone calls
• time and duration of calls
• location of the mobile phone being called
• details of connections made to the Internet
• details, but not the content, of internet e-mail and internet telephony services

Details of connected calls that are unanswered, which can be used as signals to accomplices or used to detonate bombs, will also be archived where that data exists.

It didn’t take long, however, for other interests to see the possibilities involved:

Music industry seeks access to private data to fight piracy

· Plea to Europe to widen scope of anti-terror laws
· Civil rights fears over phone and email records

Bobbie Johnson
Saturday November 26, 2005
The Guardian

The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders. In an open letter to MEPs, companies including Sony BMG, Disney and EMI have asked to be given access to communications data - records of phone calls, emails and internet surfing - in order to take legal action against pirates and filesharers. 

And according to an article on yesterday’s euobserver.com, the Panty Sniffer ‘n Chief wants access to the data:

US authorities can get access to EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’ and emails, giving a recent EU data-retention law much wider-reaching consequences than first expected, reports Swedish daily Sydsvenskan.

The EU data retention bill, passed in February after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months, aimed at fighting terrorism and organized crime.

[] 

The US delegation to the meeting "indicated that it was considering approaching each [EU] member state to ensure that the data collected on the basis of the recently adopted Directive on data retention be accessible to them," according to the notes of the meeting.

I would imagine that this would be something of a two-way street. 

The next time Richard Morin wants to take one of his crap White House-friendly straw polls , maybe in addition to mentioning the war on terra he should ask people how they feel about their phone records being used for prosecution of music downloading or handed over to, say, the French?   

(Thanks to Dave M. and SlashDot ) 

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/13/where-is-this-going/

Check out the dots on this chart.

http://img127.imageshack.us/my.php?image=globalcrossing2sf.png

You'll see dots in places where installing NSA data collection equipment would be very much against the law. Lots of these dots are in the UK. Would the NSA do that without Tony's approval? Doubtful. In other countries, what's a couple additional cabinets in a switch room that you own and operate. Probably goes entirely unnoticed.

This means basically all the UK communications to the continent(s) are compromised, as is all of their internet traffic. Tony's at 26%. Think the Brits will cut him slack when this comes out.

Oh, and how about Australia...

Global Crossing has all the best entry points.

Because the technology they use requires collecting lots of data they don't need, the stuff we are up in arms about. Then they catalog for analysis. Since they never know where an analysis thread will lead, the retention period is unspecified. Thus, it is never deleted because any one of us might be a "terrorist".

.

We don't listen to them; we simply record all of them and have software sift through them for content, and we only listen to them if the software flags them.

Or for whatever reason.

And since everything's terrorism today, from Gucci forgers to pirate DVDs to someone throwing red paint on a fur store window...

have software sift through them for content

Instead of sending the recording abroad to friendly foreign spies for an analysis.

Just in case if somebody wanted to follow the law anyway.

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Like CIFA did.

Where does Wade and MZM come in? We're learning more every day, but here's what we know now: CIFA culls "commercial data," including financial records, criminal records, credit histories and more. MZM won a contract -- through Cunningham -- to provide a data storage system to CIFA, presumeably to hold a lot of that information. Unfortunately it was a piece of crap, and was never installed.

In addition, the Washington Post has reported MZM assisted CIFA in "exploiting" the data -- presumeably by searching it, organizing it, and looking for patterns.

Keeping databases on citizens engaging in protected political activities? Datamining credit histories looking for terrorists? It looks like the place bad ideas go to stay alive, behind the curtain of secrecy. As Wade has proven, you can get away with a lot behind that curtain (for a while, anyway). I wonder what more is back there we haven't heard about.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000105.php

Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity
Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; A06

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world...

Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security.

In addition, each of the military services has begun its own post-9/11 collection of domestic intelligence, primarily aimed at gathering data on potential terrorist threats to bases and other military facilities at home and abroad. For example, Eagle Eyes is a program set up by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the program's Web site.

The Marine Corps has expanded its domestic intelligence operations and developed internal policies in 2004 to govern oversight of the "collection, retention and dissemination of information concerning U.S. persons," according to a Marine Corps order approved on April 30, 2004.

The order recognizes that in the post-9/11 era, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity will be "increasingly required to perform domestic missions," and as a result, "there will be increased instances whereby Marine intelligence activities may come across information regarding U.S. persons." Among domestic targets listed are people in the United States who it "is reasonably believed threaten the physical security of Defense Department employees, installations, operations or official visitors."

Perhaps the prime illustration of the Pentagon's intelligence growth is CIFA, which remains one of its least publicized intelligence agencies. Neither the size of its staff, said to be more than 1,000, nor its budget is public, said Conway, the Pentagon spokesman. The CIFA brochure says the agency's mission is to "transform" the way counterintelligence is done "fully utilizing 21st century tools and resources."

One CIFA activity, threat assessments, involves using "leading edge information technologies and data harvesting," according to a February 2004 Pentagon budget document. This involves "exploiting commercial data" with the help of outside contractors including White Oak Technologies Inc. of Silver Spring, and MZM Inc., a Washington-based research organization, according to the Pentagon document.

Please tag long URLs