More Scumbag Crap

I'm speechless, but have no idea as to why. It is not as if this would be unheard of from this administration. It just seems so far beyond the pale as to boggle the mind.

The other thing I think is funny...

If they want to why don't they use the whistle blower clause and seek protection for talking?

e_brownp has started such a thread: Three Cheers for Qwest!

Quote:

If they want to why don't they use the whistle blower clause and seek protection for talking?

There is no 'whistleblower clause' for Executive Branch employees. Bush got rid of that with a Signing Statement, declaring that the Unitary Executive Branch has the right to discpline people under its employ whenever and for whatever reasons they wish. You didn't know this?

Cycloptichorn

I know how phone companies work and trust me they hardly have the resources available to keep track of billing properly let alone turn over daily phone calls of 2 hundred million customers. Do you have any idea how much info that is? We are talking terabytes of info let alone someone to be able to correlate that amount of info into something useful. Knowing what I know about telecommunications that is near impossible to do.

It is really hard to believe something like this without a name and a face to back up anything.

If these people feel this is so wrong and they know it is happening then they should be able to come forward and say so instead of hiding.

You are simply incorrect. Because it isn't the phone companies turning over the data to anyone; it is the phone companies allowing the NSA, whose sole purpose is to mine information and data (but not on American citizens, btw), access to the trunk. The NSA takes care of the rest.

People are pretty selective in what they want to believe. For example, most Iraq war supporters believed the President et al when they said, 'we have evidence showing...' even though the source of that evidence was never revealed. What you are essentially saying is that you think USA Today made the whole thing up. Why would they do that? Don't you believe that after the whole Dan Rather thing, news organizations are being a lot more careful than they used to with information like this?

Tell that to Bush; he's the one who specifically bars them from doing so without facing time in a federal prison. Would you go to prison to tell the truth, when you could tell the truth, leave your name out, and not go to prison?

How do they know the "information" they get from people is true. If they can't verify it? Without people stepping forward there is no way to know it is true. As noted there is no way to know but the pure amount of info that is collected and handed over is far to much info to be of any use.

Baldi,

The question isn't 'does the phone company have the data.' You contend that the phone company can't keep track of the billing data, not that they cannot tell who is making what calls and when.

All the NSA needs is access to the trunk, to the raw data. They do their own filtering in-house. The phone companies really don't have to do anything other than assist the NSA in hooking up to the trunk.

Quote:

How do they know the "information" they get from people is true. If they can't verify it? Without people stepping forward there is no way to know it is true. As noted there is no way to know but the pure amount of info that is collected and handed over is far to much info to be of any use.

In your opinion, it is too much to be of use. But you and I don't know the power of the NSA's filtering, and you don't know the NSA's opinion on what is of use and what isn't. Therefore, statements like this are extremely hard to make definitavely.

We don't know if the information is true or not. There are allegations that this information is true. The only way to find out, is to have an investigation. But we can't do that, because the DoJ isn't even being allowed to investigate.

Are you claiming that we don't need to know the truth? Because that doesn't sound too American, comrade.

Cycloptichorn

Plus it just isn't terrorists we have to worry about. The information that is collected is also shared with other agencies to catch other types of bad guys whether it is drug dealers or kiddy porn people.

11:15 AM Apr, 07, 2006

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.

According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.

"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."

Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.

The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.

Problem is, this is explicitly against the 4th amendment.