Posted on 12/03/2007 6:36:29 AM PST by steve-b
As a technician for AT&T, Mark Klein says he helped connect a device three years ago that copied onto a government supercomputer every phone call, e-mail and Internet search made through the company's network.
"AT&T provided the National Security Agency with everything that ordinary Americans communicated over the Internet," Klein said recently on Capitol Hill. "This program included not only AT&T customers, but everyone who used the Internet because AT&T carries messages for other carriers also."
President Bush denies that. "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," he said. "Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates. The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."
Only one of those men can be telling the truth. That the White House is frantically lobbying weak links in the Senate to pass a revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) granting immunity for AT&T and other telecom companies suggests who fears exposure....
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Mark Klein = Hero
If you conduct business on public wires, then expect no privacy. Anybody who’s over the age of 6 should know that.
Get PGP and other “cloaking” services like anonymous proxy services and the like, or use public computers if you think you are doing something that you don’t want written about in a public forum.
Sheesh, people need to take responsibility for themselves.
I have also heard good things about JAP
Then again there is always this LLORKCIR....
It’s kinda like caller ID....You don’t follow up on those callers. You simply don’t care...and you never do hear what’s being said. The idea that the text of everyone’s phone calls is being logged is an absurdity.
PING
That's like saying "if you live in a high crime area, expect to get mugged." It may be realistic but it's not something to be complacent about.
The wires, incidentally, aren't "public." They're private wires available to the public on a contract basis, one of the implicit conditions of the contract being the privacy of the user.
Yep, I agree with you. The government has a huge department employing 6 billion people who do nothing but sit and read everything we put on the internet. Right now, someone is reading what I’m typing. /s
***If he is certain that it was legal to enlist telecom companies to conduct domestic surveillance, then why is he so adamant about demanding immunity for them? Bush has said he will veto a FISA bill that doesn’t include such a provision, which is difficult to construe as anything other than a way to bury the truth.***
Why is he so adamant about demanding immunity for them? I’ll tell you why: Because they would be tied up in courts for the next millenium and the country would have no reliable communications.
And while we’re at it, why is it legal for Google to cherry pick anything it wants from the internet, but not legal for our government to trace terrorists messages to each other?
Go ahead, type your name into Google. You’ll probably find messages on one site or another that you don’t even remember posting.
First, his description of, “AT&T provided the National Security Agency with everything that ordinary Americans communicated over the Internet,” is not supported by the data he claims. The points he described are all entry/egress points for communications into and out of the U.S. Second, he doesn’t understand how the internet works. Third, just because a data packet enters the U.S. doesn’t mean that its contents aren’t “foreign”.
Mark Klein installed a CALEA device. Whoopty-doo!
No it's not. It's like saying if you yell across the street, expect to be overheard.
Not only that, but there's disclosure of national security programs to the targets.
Re: the veracity of Mark Klein
We really have to ask ourselves is a device that copies “every phone call, email, and Internet search” to a government computer even possible with the band width currently possible? Wouldn’t such a powerful device, magical in its ability to copy everything to a “supercomputer” be generally known? Does “every” bit of network traffic pass through such a bottleneck that it even CAN be diverted to nefarious study? Or is the internet more decentralized than this scenario and Mark Klein would have us believe?
If such a device existed, would the super-secret, super powerful agency that arranged to have installed it used someone so sworn to secrecy that they have a tooth with cyanide in it to commit suicide before revealing what color was the orange juice they had for breakfast that morning? Or would they rely on just any John Doe without a security clearance to do this highly sensitive job? Is the CIA/NSA/FBI/DHC/RNC so stupid? (Well the RNC might be.)
Why would we believe Mark Klein?
Why should we?
I’d consider them private if they were’t regulated so heavily by government and didn’t collude with the government to keep out competition.
Where in the contract do they list the expectation of privacy ? Jeez, we’ve known since the 30s that the NSA listened in on a regular basis.
Telcos are just a tool of the government - a facist partnership - just like the companies who “own” the “public” airwaves.
Well, I want you to know this post is absolutely private. No one reading over my shoulder at the moment as they’re all asleep..of course there’s the paranoid geeky lookingguy down the street with software that can figure my keystokes....and my computer does run through a fiber optic cable.....and of course it’s easier to “bug’ a cell phone than a land line but you want total secrecy....pigeons still work as do one time codes. One if by land, two if by sea....if you really have something to hide then don’t use electronics without encryption you know to be safe..but then if using encryption devices it makes the government that much more uh, suspect you have a secret. Simple codes always work.
Or, like doing your business on postcards, and then complaining when you find out that people at the post office can read your messages.
I would frankly be a little disappointed if the NSA didn't have the ability to search for certain traffic on the Internet.
That's some storage system they have. Petabytes wouldn't cover a fraction of it.
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