Of course they did. It’s what they do.

It’s for Bush and Cheney!

Mark Klein is not alone. There are many other technicians with knowledge and evidence just like Mark.

They are waiting for the “cover up vote” before they expose the extensive corruption. Then it will be too late.

Watch this vote closely, for those that vote for immunity are voting for the cover up.

Don’t be fooled, everyone voting knows full well what they are doing.

I’m certain that the republicans must be referring to some new type of humans who only exist in the Republican Party. There is no reason to believe that government officials would spy on Americans without probable cause or a warrant, because these conservative humans are superior to all other humans. They cannot be tempted. This is why we can be complete suckers and dutifully trust that republicans will not behave like other humans.

See, how simple this is? Once one recognizes that there are superior humans amongst us there is no problem with republican arguments regarding lawful, religious, sanctified, and divinely inspired republicans spying on whoever they choose. I don’t see the problem here.

Now mind you that I’m not defending this in any way, shape, or form (and in fact I’ve been a long time contributor to EFF from when it was first started up). Some of you have asked about why “more shit hasn’t hit the fan” essentially.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the entire Internet is tapped in the splitting room. Last time I checked, we were schlepping around multi terabytes of information daily. Throw in digital phone communications and such and we likely generate data by the terabyte per hour or minute now.

So you have to stream this in and store it somewhere, and make sure you have enough storage. Just putting that structure together is a daunting task — you need enough storage, computers working in parallel…you know ther’es no indefinitely sized storage media out there to suck all this in, so you’ve got to be changing out full media and putting in empty ones all the time. Then you’ve got to put the filled media somewhere accessible to the computers that will search and sift thru the data. Mind boggling at the size of this task yet?

Now, it’s possible to streamline that a bit. You might, for example, discard binary files (although, I bet the RIAA, if they don’t alreayd, would luuuurrrrvvve to have their won splitting room for binaries (aka music files, dvds, cd images, etc)) and concentrate on text files. But the moment you start filtering your input, you run the risk of slowing down the streaming and copying of data.

Now, you have a mountain of data. How do you sort through it? How do you search through all of that without it taking hours and hours to complete a query sifting through all that data.

Yes, google seems to do it for the entire network. But this isn’t quite true, there are a number of factors. First of all, google is monitoring web pages. Many people forget that the internet is only partially composed of web pages. Email, file transfers and other types of data exchange actually make up a far larger proportion. Second, if you are at all aware of how google sets things up (I’ve interviewed with them before), they have massive numbers of computers set up in parallel, all over the country. They don’t have it in a single room. Third, they’ve decentralized and split up the searches themselves. Images here, news there, individual sites over there, book searches here, and so on. Something that taps into the general flow of the internet can’t be choosy like that.

Data collection, retention, and recall is a dicey thing. Here’s another aspect to consider: technology moves so fast in upgrading storage media that the risk of losing data because it is on outdated media is very real and a distinct problem. NASA has been battling this one for quite some time, as much of their archival data from the various different space probes is rapidly out of reach for researchers and so on, because the equipment to read the old storage media is harder and harder to get ahold of.

However, I’m quite sure there’s more than enough invasion of privacy that goes on, and indeed, it’s the simple loss of expectation of privacy, as Cassie said, that is more than enough damage right there. But the fact that more hasn’t happened or more hasn’t come out of these spying things that we know of, could well be because they’re literally choking on the data. That ain’t coffee coming out of their noses.

To follow these concerns, going through the EFF site (www.eff.org) is well worth the effort. They lay it out pretty well, although there’s a fair amount of geekitude (what do you expect with Stallman involved :-) ).

Here’s where I begin

Don’t have a lot of time, late for a meeting …

How do you sort through the data?

google Narus and for one way and find out about all the en es ay (say it out loud) connections

Or click here for a summary

So, how does NSA do it?

A company called Narus has developed the NarusInsight Intercept Suite: a purpose built network surveillance system that is capable of analyzing (in real time) ALL of the data passing through the largest network nodes in existence. This system is capable of applying sophisticated targeting rules to the traffic, as well as recording entire, individual sessions for later analysis. According to the Narus website:

These capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules. When Narus partners’ powerful analytic tools are combined with the surgical targeting and real-time collection capabilities of Directed Analysis and Lawful Intercept modules, analysts or law enforcement agents are provided capabilities that have been unavailable thus far.

How many nodes?

Unknown, but according to Mark Klein in his Declaration in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction:

In the course of my employment, I was required to connect new circuits to the “splitter cabinet” and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with another AT&T technician, I learned that other such “splitter cabinets” were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

That’s just one company and there’s plenty more … I don’t have time to find the links but there are others that brag about being able to intercept and analyze something like 500 billion emails in just the US not even counting the rest of the world.

And if you just want to talk about ATT — have at this which I don’t know if is in one of Christy’s links

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance which talks about Hancock which is the system ATT uses among other things like what Russell Tice has spoken of

Remember Russell Tice, the NSA SIGINT officer who had knowledge of a special access NSA operation that was so disturbing that he tried to tell the U.S. Congress about it?

What was Tice talking about here:

Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said.

An angle that we haven’t heard about. Since everyone and his dog knows about the mass surveillance, what could that angle be?

More recently, Tice said that the NSA intercepts of civilian traffic is “the tip of the iceberg” and says, again, that there is something else, something we still don’t know about. Here’s part of the interview between Tice and Reason:

REASON: What prompted you to step forward now?

Tice: Well, I’ve known this for a long time and I’ve kept my mouth shut…

REASON: You’re referring to what James Risen calls “The Program,” the NSA wiretaps that have been reported on?

Tice: No, I’m referring to what I need to tell Congress that no one knows yet, which is only tertiarily connected to what you know about now.

More here about tor which Praedor Atrebates was talking about upthread

And if you want a ton of raw info click here

BTW thanks for your info peanutbutter

peanutbutter @ 9

Very interesting. I need to work this out on paper (I have done extensive network setups on a professional basis). I’m not sure you can actually do this for *all* of the Internet. But you can certainly sample a large portion depending on where you’re dipping in. Hmmm.

If you know where the splitter is, you can route traffic around that. The question is whether it’s on one of the main arteries. My first impression, though is that you can, given the location, be assured of getting *everything* in the DC government. Which might explain some of the Democratic politician’s actions.

When Louis Freeh was FBI Director he began a program called “Carnivore” it invovles a data packet sniffing software. I am a technootard (Christy coined that term *g*) but you may be able to make something out of this article. After much controversy, the FBI claimed to put carnivore out to pasture, but did say it could get the same thing done using commercially available software.

Therefore, I assume NSA could get the same thing done using commerciall available software.

The point is, it’s already been done.

70% of all surveillance is now outsourced

For the details, see:
“Yahoo, China and Bush’s America.”

BTW Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudi Giuliani.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11…..on.html?hp

They made the announcement in a joint appearance. Reporters stayed a safe distance from the two because of the toxic levels of hypocrisy.

Or just good ole-fashioned lightning bolts.

I hear he’s lawyered-up, now, though.