Posted on 06/08/2013 2:15:41 AM PDT by chuckles
I'm retired from ATT for 12 years now. I worked as a tech installer and repair for digital circuits. During the Clinton administration, I was involved in installing fiber mux's that I was informed went to somewhere in Va. It was pretty common knowledge that it was the gubmint. The sheer size and speed of the circuits was what brought attention to it from most of us working on it. I don't want to spend 2 hours of typing about what it was, but just say it was part of a fiber ring, a very LARGE fiber ring.
Let's consider what happens when you call ATT with trouble on your DSL line. The call can be answered in Austin Tx. and the trouble ticket can flow to St Louis. In truth, it could go anywhere on the globe. The talk was the techs would be in Monterey Mexico for awhile, but how silly would that be to put your WHOLE NETWORK AT THE HANDS OF FOREIGNERS?
The poop I got was that this was part of a security network for the gubmint and would be paid for by the "Gore" tax. Now your trouble ticket would be taken by a phone company worker and he/she could dial in your number into his test position and monitor and test your line. He could see everything you had on your desktop and watch what was happening on your line to find the trouble. The point here is THIS capability was going to the government 15 years ago and they could read your email, or look at your history or whatever. They basically( according to what I was told) would look for key words, like "bomb", "terror", "attack", ( I'm sure I just triggered it). The key here is though, what if I wanted to monitor a congressman. All I need is his DSL line number( usually his phone number, but not so much now). As far as I know, there was no judges and warrants involved from the get go. I complained back then, but not many seemed to care. Now this has grown exponentially. Now, we have the new facility being built in Utah. I'm told this will be big enough to follow EVERYONE ON THE,.......PLANET! We will know everything about some guy in Nigeria and the computer he used to send the email that wanted you to help him get his millions out of hock.
How will politicians stop themselves from checking Limbaugh, or Ted Cruz, or Sarah Palin? Could you stop yourself from looking up BHO's BC or college records? The toothpaste is out of the tube now, IMHO, and I don't think it will be put back in. Even if I witnessed them blowing up the buildings in Utah, I would figger they had our stuff an a huge thumb drive in a Colorado mountain. I can't wait for ObamaCare to tell me since I'm in the NRA, "No chemo for you!"
BTW, where's the Tea Party? Shouldn't they be planning a million man march on July 4th by now?
IIRC one of the laws passed to deal with the internet (Millinieum ACT maybe?) mandated that the system would have a back door for the Government Security agencies to use that eliminated the need for doing physical wire taps. IOW such could be done by entering a few commands and one could monitor net traffice and phone calls via the “backbone”
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
The feds may have the technology, but they'll probably BOMB the actual use of it. So I wouldn't live in TERROR of them. If you do, you're likely to get all stressed out and just BLOW UP emotionally.
Especially if you have an EXPLOSIVE temperament.
Well, I guess I'd better wrap this post up before others think I'm just pontificating and start engaging in character ASSASSINATION.
Heh.
Just stay away from me. Is that a drone I hear?
Careful- You might become a TARGET and they’ll put you in their CROSSHAIRS and come GUNNING for you. And all you spelling NAZIS out there - I don’t care if you make me a CASUALTY of your SCARE TACTICS.
On a more serious note, I wonder if encryption technologies will increase as a standard offering of software packages in the near future. To COMBAT against spammers and hackers of course.
The government already requires that it be provided the keys to new encryption techniques. They are very persuasive.
If you were to be able to hear the drone, you’d have already been dead. It would just be making the fly-by to get the damage assessment.... :)
If you heard the drone,your neighbor was the target.
That’s true too!
They are allowed to listen in to calls going overseas, as soon as that communication crosses the border.
They use tricks though, like saying they can’t tell if a call goes over satellite whether it is domestic or foreign.
There are also calls that go to tech support which has a US number, but they go overseas. All of those were completely fair game.
Bottom line, it seems that when in doubt, they listen.
Right after 9/11 my family joked about talking on the phone and being tapped.
In the past I’ve been a little more radical, lol, and libertarian. In the early days of widespread internet usage, mid-nineties, it was common among some to deliberately use a list of keywords, even bury it in code, in order to “jam” ECHELON.
How quickly we forget.
The Tea Party is here:
http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=27814627
The denial of IRS org’s limits the ability to broker space for rallies.
And I have also seen the fed cage’s on AT&T’s fiber loop. They have very expensive boxes. Secondarily, I have seen them upstream at core infrastructure providers.
I didn’t complain about it myself. I just knew if you screwed with it, you would get a call and a visit from the Feds. I don’t mind the equipment. I do mind that is a blanket tracking system with no respect for search and siezure.
A case can be made for a blanket sweep as a perimeter defense, say if a nuke is being smuggled in. But that too requires a court order for a limited time. The Verizon tap for instance, via the FBI, was INTERNAL monitoring- not external. Which means they aren’t protecting us from the outside, they are protecting themselves from us. That dog don’t hunt.
And those who brought it up then were deemed crackpots.
The truth is that conservatives took their eye off the ball when their guy was in office, and it’s not surprising that liberals really want to look the other way now.
The internet was started by the government, no? (Al Gore invented it.) I hardly think it strange to have its tentacles firmly embedded in all digital transmissions.
The danger here isn’t so much in the collection of all this data but rather in who is doing the analysis and then taking action. Can you say ‘IRS’...? Remember it’s the govt and they’re only here to help.
Truth is, many exchanged private purchasing habits data and patterns to Marketers and received “air miles” or “points”. This has been a practise since the 1980’s.
Then, we exchanged even more private information to access “free” stuff like gmail, google+, chrome, facebook, hotmail, etc., etc., etc!!
What we HAVE NOT agreed to is access to our personal data and information so that one political party can massage a message to manipulate voters, or identify and political adversaries for retribution from the IRS, EPA, OSHA, DHS, HHS, Dept. of Education, and any other Federal Department.
There is no reason to believe the Chinks have not already accessed that data as well. It’d be the “Fort Knox” of information.
They don’t need the keys. Just makes it easier for them to sift this stuff through the real time equipment.
Encryption is the dog that didn’t bark.
When was the last time you heard someone in fed law enforcement complain about civilian use of encryption? I’m counting between 10 and 12 years.
The dog that didn’t bark. This tells us when, approximately, they developed the ability to completely decrypt on a wide scale and implement that in real time.
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