Collaborating Telecoms on the Hotseat
For many years, every international telegram sent or received by Western Union was copied by them and delivered to U.S. intelligence.
Undersea telephone cables have been tampered with by U.S. submarine-based operatives with the acquiescence of the directors of the telecom firms.
The extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program is different only in the fiber-optic based technology that is the current standard. The principle of a government/commercial alliance is the same.
Today's New York Times reports on the possible legal jeopardy faced by the current generation of helpful telecoms if it becomes established that they assisted in depriving American citizens of their constitutional rights.
Now the companies are in an awkward position, with members of Congress questioning them about their role in the eavesdropping. On Thursday two Democratic senators, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, wrote to the chief executives of AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon, asking them to confirm or deny a report in USA Today on Monday that said telecommunications executives had identified AT&T, Sprint and MCI (now part of Verizon) as partners of the agency.
The two senators demand information that, if it exists, would be highly classified: details of secret N.S.A. requests for help and the number of people whose communications were intercepted.
In a Feb. 2 reply to a similar query from Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, AT&T offered a careful response. The two-paragraph note did not deny that the company was assisting the agency...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy group, has filed a class-action suit against AT&T maintaining that the company's cooperation with the agency is violating customers' privacy. The suit says the company is providing the N.S.A. "direct access" to its "key domestic telecommunications facilities," but does not offer proof.
The use of dubious "certifications" may provide the cooperating firms with a legal loophole:
Federal law permits companies to intercept calls or e-mail messages without a warrant and protects them from lawsuits if a "certification" is provided by the attorney general or his deputies stating that no warrant is needed.
Such certifications may have been provided to companies assisting the N.S.A. program, because President Bush has said that he authorized it in a secret executive order to operate without warrants...
American telephone executives have traditionally seen their companies' cooperation with intelligence agencies as a patriotic duty, industry officials say. The officials say they have not heard of companies' receiving regulatory breaks, contracts or other benefits for cooperation, both because a quid pro quo is not necessary and because it might expose the secret assistance.
A problematic explanation at best.
As digital technology has grown more complex, the Calea law has made snooping easier, said Anthony M. Rutkowski, president of the Global Lawful Intercept Industry Forum, a group of companies that produce equipment to comply with Calea (pronounced kuh-LEE-uh) and similar foreign laws.
"I don't know of a vendor anywhere that hasn't built intercept capability into its equipment," Mr. Rutkowski said.
But the cost of adding intercept capability sometimes leads to resistance. Currently some companies are fighting a government effort to require intercept capability on the Internet phone service called Voice Over Internet Protocol, or V.O.I.P.
Typically, it is a question of money, not of the defense of Americans' rights that triggers any complaints from the companies.
The too-close relationship between corporations and government veers into taboo areas very quickly.
We will not get into the issue here of the "_NSAKEY" built into the encryption algorithm of Microsoft's Windows software.
posted by Effwit at 1:13 PM
12 Comments:
M1 thinks this be bigger than a well-intentioned, albeit legally dubious, dragnet gone awry. The more I and a few colleagues sift through Gonzalez testimony and compare notes on allied activities and various think tank papers published around 1997-2000...well, the more the dragnet thesis appears to be but a give-away ruse, a coincidental spin-off benefit, for/of a much deeper and broader project. But then again, who knows.....
M1:
Correct, the dragnet or data-mining explanation is just a red herring.
The dead giveaway for that is the embrace of that thesis by certain tools in the media.
The architects of the program have been careful to work around several restrictive Signals Intelligence Directives by means of obtaining a new (classified) USSID.
Apparently a broader range of (non-terrorist) targets can be legally spied on.
But then again, who knows.....
Now there ya go again reaffirming the wisdom of the Meatball Clan in linking to the Way Of The EFFWIT.
You can borrow the car. Screw my foster Ma and her sad solitude.
Meatball One:
The adamantine wisdom of the Meatball Clan far outshines the lukewarm understanding of the Effwit Group.
The way of the Effwit can be a difficult path, fraught with all sorts of pitfalls and dangers.
But it is good for one's practice.
On a different but related topic...what do you know about the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)?
I was doing a little reading of PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" white paper from 2000 today and I found it to be quite enlightening. Seems like a virtual blueprint for taking over the world by military force. And the list of members in PNAC is a veritable Who's Who of neo-conservatati: Cheney, Rummy, Libby, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, John Bolton, Bill Bennett, Zalmay Khalilzad, Elliot Abrams, et al.
The white paper even mentions a "...catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Maybe not a smoking gun, but pretty darn close.
Thoughts, Effwit?
On another related note...What do you know about Operation Northwoods? Stumbled across this little-known plan drawn up by the Joint Chiefs in 1962 as a way to draw the U.S. into a war with Cuba.
Interesting premise. Using self-inflicted acts of terror to gain support for an attack on Cuba. McNamara rejected it, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was fired.
I wonder if the PNAC crew dusted it off.
Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmm."
DrewL, don't go changing the subject. Get in on the back-slappin' instead. It'll make ye young bones feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
Drew L:
I do indeed know about PNAC. As you have noted the PNAC crowd was basically transplanted lock, stock and barrel into the Bush administration.
One of my contacts in Washington has a very explosive factually based theory about PNAC and the Iraq war that he has been working on for several years. It involves details that have never been made public. That's all I can say about it now. Sorry.
The "new Pearl Harbor" line has been floating around for years, they have successfully put it behind them for now. Establishment Washington cannot take seriously any (even factual) premises that carry the whiff of conspiracy.
PNAC masquerades as one of Washington's ubiquitous think tanks. Almost everyone you have ever heard of in national politics is associated with one of these institutions. That's what makes PNAC a perfect cover for skullduggery.
On Operation Northwoods: That too has been popping up here and there on the internet. The fact that the plot was committed to paper (to be eventually discovered)shows two things.
First, that someone's tradecraft was seriously deficient. Compare, no piece of paperwork linking the Kennedy brothers to the myriad plots to assassinate Castro exists. That's because the CIA was in charge of the efforts. Operation Northwoods was military. Nuff said.
Second, that the plot was no more serious than than the OPLANs that exist and are routinely updated for the U.S. invasion of Canada (and many other countries).
Operation Northwoods does kind of betray a rather cavilier attitude of some of our national security types, though.
Meatball One:
Lay off DrewL.
When you and I are enjoying barely an hour here and there of the warm Cuban sun between interrogations by the U.S. military, we will need someone to continue in our absence.
lol
DrewL, the pass word to my blog is: IluvIKEA&IKEAluvsME
Username:Olly N
Effwit-
Interesting stuff. Especially the "explosive" theory you mention. Enquiring minds want to know, but as they say, all in due time. PNAC seems to be on a mission, and they appear to be the ones in control of the Bush administration.
Drew L:
Your observations about PNAC are entirely justified.
BTW, there is a good liberal website called Project for the Old American Century
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