Wired News Whistle-Blowers Evidence, Uncut

[cousinlucky]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70944-2.html

[Vergil83]

Although I don't normally do this, I am just going to copy and past what I wrote on my blog about it......

As I posted before, the government has claimed that information about the massize data mining operation are classified and can't be relased. Today, Wired released documents about this program(pdf).

The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.

Two very important themes are reinforced here. First, this is not some 1950s detective show wiretapping, were the correct bad guy is listened to at the exactly correct time. This is a sophisticated operation requiring in some cases new technology.

This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber optic circuits do not “leak” their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.

This problem is solved with “splitters” which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the “secret room.” The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform-- in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter—its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the Internet.

And second, this is not just for monitoring telephone calls. This is about survalence of the entire Internet. Additionally, data obtained from Internet usage is even more dependent on information about the site being visted, as the number of data requests by far out way the number of telephone calls. I would say it is safe to conclude that records of visits to particular ips are being collected. There has also been a dramtic increase in requests of information from ISPs.

No doubt, supporters of the program will label calls for the ending of it as nothing but partisan fighting. However, I have little faith that the Democrats will do much with this issue. Rather this has and continues to be pushed forward by civil liberties groups on both the right and the left. Even if it is currently used to collect information about suspected terrorists (which I doubt), in the future its use will increase for other purposes. For example, the RIAA/MPAA would love to only collect data on visitors to the pirate bay