 |
|
| CURRENT SECTION :: TechZone | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
|
 |
It was just another boring day at the office for AT&T engineer Mark Klein: tidy the desk; answer a few emails; take a tea break; help install a state-of-the-art listening device in a secret room under the watchful eye of the US National Security Agency (NSA). Ho hum, nothing to see here. But if allegations running through the US courts are to be believed, Klein's helpful installation of a device, "splitting" communications, was the start of a massive eavesdropping program intercepting internet traffic. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31st, 2006, accusing it of "violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications." Last week, EFF filed supporting documents: "The lawsuit alleges that AT&T Corp. has opened its key telecommunications facilities and databases to direct access by the NSA and/or other government agencies, thereby disclosing to the government the contents of its customers' communications…EFF alleges that AT&T has violated the privacy of its customers..., as well as broken longstanding communications privacy laws." AT&T is ideally placed to help with the NSA's covert listening. It is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Its networks handle over 300 million voice calls and 4,000 terabytes of data, daily. According to EFF, this is approximately 200 times the amount of data contained in all the books in the Library of Congress. The mind boggles how any agency could mine such a mountain of data, but Klein, who is now helping the EFF with the case, reveals the equipment the NSA had installed in its secret room. "The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for pre-programmed targets," he said. Narus, on the company website, explains the equipment: "Packet-level, flow-level, and application-level usage information is captured and analyzed as well as raw user session packets for forensic analysis, surveillance or in satisfying regulatory compliance for lawful intercept." Klein says, "Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet – whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data." Klein's information comes from reading "available" design documents and chatting to mates. Clearly the secret rooms were not terribly secret: "My job required me to connect new circuits to the "splitter" cabinet and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with a technician back East, I learned that other such 'splitter' cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego." The EFF is taking the case very seriously, "In the largest 'fishing expedition' ever devised, the NSA uses powerful computers to 'data-mine' the contents of these Internet and telephone communications for suspicious names, numbers, and words," it says. And Klein? He is motivated by high thinking: "It is critical that this information be brought out into the open, and that the American people be told the truth about the extent of the administration's warrant-less surveillance practices." But if the NSA is incapable of listening to the open-secrets on the grapevine at AT&T, and given the state of US intelligence – what with missing WMDs and the failure to prevent insurgencies –, one wonders if there's anybody actually capable of running such sophisticated equipment. Even if allegations turn out to be true, would the NSA ever know if the results weren’t simply made up by the machine? There's been enough made up evidence in recent years to make this a critically important class action, and one we should keep listening too. William Knight Apr 20, 2006 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| All content © Contractor UK Limited | [Register for News Letter] | [Privacy Statement] | [Terms of Use] | [Top of Page] |