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Wider Domestic Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry

Published on December 16th, 2007

Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry – New York Times — This is a good article that everyone should read in its entirety. The NSA, which is supposed to protect us from outside threats, seems intent on spying on everyone. This is said to be for drug and crime enforcement but can easily be used for political and economic purposes such as intimidation of political opponents and stock market manipulation. This is why it is illegal in the first place. Note all this activity predates

9/11 and continues unabated to this day.

In a separate program, N.S.A. officials met with the Qwest executives in February 2001 and asked for more access to their phone system for surveillance operations, according to people familiar with the episode. The company declined, expressing concerns that the request was illegal without a court order.

While Qwest’s refusal was disclosed two months ago in court papers, the details of the N.S.A.’s request were not. The agency, those knowledgeable about the incident said, wanted to install monitoring equipment on Qwest’s “Class 5” switching facilities, which transmit the most localized calls. Limited international traffic also passes through the switches.

A government official said the N.S.A. intended to single out only foreigners on Qwest’s network, and added that the agency believed Joseph Nacchio, then the chief executive of Qwest, and other company officials misunderstood the agency’s proposal. Bob Toevs, a Qwest spokesman, said the company did not comment on matters of national security.

Other N.S.A. initiatives have stirred concerns among phone company workers. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey challenging the agency’s wiretapping operations. It claims that in February 2001, just days before agency officials met with Qwest officials, the N.S.A. met with AT&T officials to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, N.J., to give the agency access to all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through it.

The accusations rely in large part on the assertions of a former engineer on the project. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.

“At some point,” he said, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”

found by Aric Mackey

8 users responded in " Wider Domestic Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry "

# 1 jbellies said, on December 16th, 2007 at 9:27 am

Great pic of Lavrenti P. Beria, soviet minister of internal security until he was executed in 1953 (tough world, eh?). The inscription is in Cyrillic, but contains a letter i which does not exist in Russian. My guess is Ukrainian. The N.S.A. didn’t pay me anything to divert your attention from the true message of this posting.

# 2 GF said, on December 16th, 2007 at 10:07 am

Yeah, Clinton got caught trying Carnivore but as you can see that isn’t stopping them. Has it ever? I knew Woodrow Wilson spied on other governments and business. He had an exchange under the White House that could listen in to all the phone traffic in D.C. In fact good ole Alberto uses him as an example as to why it’s legal domestically.

So, you may ask, with all this information why are they so inept at stopping crime?

# 3 bs said, on December 16th, 2007 at 10:24 am

#2 what is your definition of crime?

Our government seems to have a very different interpretation than we lowly citizens.

# 4 Dennis said, on December 16th, 2007 at 11:32 am

First door on the left….one cross each.

Welcome to Amerika

# 5 T.J. said, on December 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

This reminds me of back when I was in grade school in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. We would put down the Soviet Union because they spied on most of their citizens and people had to live in paranoia and fear of their government.

So much for land of the free..

# 6 Eric said, on December 16th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

I work for a telecom that is having to do this very thing, as of next year. Government has ordered it to be done by the 1st of the year. Sad the way things have gone downhill as fast as they have. And people wonder why I am so cynical.

# 7 DeLeMa said, on December 16th, 2007 at 8:03 pm

And as more stories in this vein continue to proliferate..trust in all forms of law-enforcement within government will contiue to decline for more and more people/citizens. That’s more than just too bad, so sad, that’s potentially downright scary and I wander what special form of arrogance is required by the people responsible that can allow them to stoke the coming fires ?

I guess we’ll find out eventually, I hope I remember the hotdogs.

# 8 BubbaRay said, on December 16th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

Even in the early 70’s at Collins Radio, I was always nervous when the “Black Suits” walked in. Just to attend meetings, I had to have a “secret” clearance.

Collins built ACD’s and all the comm for NASA at the time, but I wondered about the deep technical interest they had in state-of-the-art ACDs and switching systems.

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