TELECOM GIANT HAS SOME QUESTIONS TO ANSWER …
|| By FITSNEWS || The National Security Agency’s massive domestic spying program was aided and abetted by a “highly collaborative” relationship with telecom giant AT&T.
According to documents obtained by The New York Times from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the company was lauded by the agency for its “extreme willingness to help” them obtain billions of emails. Not only that, AT&T erected surveillance equipment at seventeen of its national internet hubs to facilitate the snooping.
Additionally, NSA officials were told to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities because “this is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”
“AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013,” the Times reported. “AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks.”
In fact beginning in 2011, AT&T was reportedly giving the government “over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day.” Not only that, another of the uncovered memos reveals how AT&T’s cooperation afforded the government with “unique accesses to other telecoms and I.S.P.s.”
Wow.
Oh, and both the network and the government have gone to great pains to conceal their collaborative efforts to directly violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The AT&T revelations come as the federal government is effectively transitioning its domestic spying program to private providers.
Some liberty advocates – including U.S. Senator Rand Paul – hail this as a victory.
We don’t …
In fact AT&T’s long-standing complicity in the government’s snooping scheme is further evidence that these big corporations cannot be trusted to safeguard our personal information.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Government has every right to collect information from individuals in the event probable cause exists for a warrant. However it has absolutely no right to collect and store billions of email addresses from individuals without a warrant.
The government’s Orwellian domestic spy network – which was found unconstitutional earlier this year – was courageously exposed in 2013 by Snowden. The whistleblower continues to fight for individual liberty, promoting the use of encryption technology in an effort to limit government’s ability to snoop.
49 comments
Here’s what I want to know:
*******Will the merger of AT&T with DirecTV reduce my satellite TV rates?*****
No reduction. When the rates increase AT&T will tell you they would have gone up much more had the merger not occurred.
Questions: Did ATT management and top staff allow their own calls/records to be harvested by NSA? Did ATT management and top staff notify their subordinate employees about this program? It appears to me that ATT found a way to spy on its on employees and contractors.
Q: Did ATT management and top staff allow their own calls/records to be harvested by NSA? – Did they allow it? No, did they oppose it again, No. The C-level executives are purposefully insulated from these decisions and operations by their own request and at the behest of the agencies involved. Outside of the engineering staff necessary to implement the taps and (maybe) their bosses the details wouldn’t be passed up or down the chain. You can bet there are a few telecom engineers and technicians who’s phones and girlfriends, etc. phones don’t show up in any taps though.
I want to spank Lily…..
TMI – oh you mean the girl in the ads…
Yeah, my post was not clear but I edited it.
She probably has more than either one of us could handle.
You do know the domestic violence laws that are getting more stringent, are aimed at you, and out-of-control, never-had-any perverts like you.
So, you’re saying that you have never had a playful woman….
Now I remember who you are. You’re Annie, the woman I met at your church dance in June, 2002, and who asked me to take you to Group Therapy where you got stinking drunk, took me home with you, and banged the living daylights out of me for about two weeks.
But your comment is for Thomas who was the guy you dated after me, who didn’t mind that you wouldn’t take a shower before screwing his brains out. I sincerely hope that your hygiene has improved since.
And those are his good points.
(heh) .. (heh)
“She got everything that Uncle John needs.”
I’ll play one of my Zydeco records which has a song similar that is funny — I’ll post a few of the lyrics here later.
Don’t spank Lily. She gives me special deals that are not available to any one else. Seriously.
Looks like AT&T now has something in common with FITSNews.
“this is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”
So, AT&T was the NSA’s bitch for nothing?
Is Disqus as cooperative with the NSA as AT&T?
Probably not. If the NSA wants Disqus data they’ll just pick it up off the fiber backbones owned by at&t.
While I agree with easterndumbfuckistan, I have no doubt that Disqus hands over everything at the drop of a hat.
Google, Yahoo, etc., are only able to put up cursory defenses to Federal overreach…they too get squashed like bugs in court and rarely deny a Fed inquiry. Disqus is no where near the size and/or has the resources to fight the Feds.
If you’re looking for true anonymity on the internet, it’s almost impossible- even if you are a super hacker extraordinaire.
Agreed. I just don’t know if the NSA goes around asking every small niche (even though Disqus is the comment provider for many sites comments in general are a niche, a very small percentage of content consumers actually comment, FITS may be an exception but it’s a niche in it self) provider for data. Any time you are investigating, auditing, etc. You try to involve as few people as possible. No need to ask for the data if you have it. I wonder where Disqus’ main data center is, you can bet at&t is up stream not too far, probably an easy sort and filter for IP addresses belonging to disqus and the filter by the user name you are searching for. Continue filter, sort, etc until you get to the level of detail you are looking for. Total anonymity is almost impossible unless you are a NationState level actor, organized crime, or some other well funded organization with massive access to black market devices and the ability to remain mobile while plying your trade.
Access to stolen laptops, phones, tablets, mobile internet device etc to use once and dispose of. Even using new devices once and tossing would set a pattern that could be tracked. Stolen device would be using some other persons electronic finger print one time and then tossing it. This would be very difficult to track. Of course you can’t ever use the same screen names, email address, phone numbers, etc more than once. You would need to use some type of cryptographic hash or one time pad to generate message accounts if you needed to communicate with compatriots.
Obama has raped this nation. And FITSNews, along with the most-ignorant and most backward, have been more than complicit.
We tried to tell you. Why are you acting so surprised now?
Bush started this not Obama. You are an idiot.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061901545.html
Bush conducted surveillance on terrorists. He has no IRS or NSA spying scandals, like Obama. The policy is meant for protection, and that’s how Bush used it, Dumbass.
You have proven you are corrupt, and cannot be trusted. You are the worst of government against its people. You care about feeding your greed and maintaining power. Nothing else.
You’re still blaming Bush, and you have the nerve to call someone else an idiot. You are the typical Obama, liberal ass-kisser.
Brilliant assessment of the state of the evil,stale and hateful liberal/progressive mind and how it thinks.
Thx. I admire your work, too.
FipTango is talking to herself again…
I agree 100%, Bush wanted to monitor external terrorist. Obama is out to spy on and destroy domestic opposition(which most are US citizens) to his policies.
You are both idiots. Bush did not need legislation to protect the phone companies from tapping the phones of “external” terrorists. He was tapping the phones of American citizens. That is why the phone companies were sued. That is why the congress passed a law to protect them from suit. Nothing has changed. The NSA is doing the same thing it has been doing for ten years. This is all the product of Republican legislation. The Patriot Act and the Surveillance Bill.
And if you think Bush and Cheney did not use that to spy on their political opponents you are a total dupe.
Again: you clueless Dumbass. Bush’s goal was protecting the country, and its citizens, from terrorists. There was never anything he did to prove to the contrary.
There is nothing Obama has done, but prove that he is against Americans and our most-noble principles.
You have a BAd reputation as anti-American. And it is well-deserved.
Republican good, Democrat bad.
Republican love country, Democrat join ISIS.
Republican who cheat on wife Christian. Democrat who remain faithful is Devil.
that’s right, they probably did it exactly as much as Hillary did.
You are correct, as usual. And if we would not have let Iraq fall, like Obama did, we’d have reaped a TREMENDOUS benefit from it.
As it is: Obama screwed it up, so he could blame Bush (and because he’s a screw-up.) And Dumbasses believe him.
Yes, Obama should have maintained a US military presence at Sather Air Base(part of the Baghdad International Airport). That small presence(along with one Carrier Task Force in the Persian Gulf) should have been enough to monitor and keep ISIS and other disruptive forces in that area under control. After what we did to the Iraqi army left no desire for any element in that area to challenge the US. The Middle East is now in a state of massive disarray and that is Obama’s fault.
Bush created a spy network and used it to spy on American Citizens. He then destroyed most of the evidence of his crimes and the crimes of his administration by having the RNC delete the emails he, Cheney and others illegally put on a private Email server at the RNC. They were all criminals who should be in jail. Especially Cheney who pushed us in to war so his former boss could earn billions of dollars in war profits while Americans died.
It it what it is, Bush destroyed the USA for Iraq, idiot.
Iranians got the right to vote – and 70% did -after Bush “destroyed” it. Remember the media and the Democrats shitting all over yourselves when the people were freed, and expressed it?
Bush also caught Saddam Hussein, turned him over the people, and he was tried. He did not execute him, like Obama is fond of.
That country would have been a beacon of freedom, and an ally forever, if your ignorant fuck of a president did not screw it up. Dumbass.
You Sound like you believe everything stupid people in the media feed you.
“Iranians got the right to vote”
And GRAND AYATOLLAH al-Sistani forced Dumbya to allow an early vote and the neocons lost their Iraq colony.
This may be your most ignorant rant in the last year GT, and that is a tall order. Hell you can’t even get the country right.
I said back when the “patriot act” was being discussed that as long as a decent responsible administration was in charge it was OK but when (not if) a untrustworthy administration gained power it would be used against US. I was right.
You are a fool. The Bush Administration was totally corrupt.
The Obama Administration supports our enemies-foreign and domestic.
If you are too stupid to see the difference between the two administrations, you are hopeless.
I have decided that instead of a Fox News generated echo chamber, the right wing in this country has been in a Fox News generated coma. How is this new news. Do none of you remember that when Bush was President, all of the phone companies were giving the NSA access to their systems for spying. The ACLU, brought a suit to stop it on privacy grounds; and the Republicans push through legislation to prevent the phone companies from being sued for doing what you you are saying AT&T is doing now. All of them are doing it. They have been doing it since at least 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302323.html
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/05/bush-administration-proposes-retroactive-immunity-for-phone-companies/
You are an ignorant cliche. You have your head so far up Obama’s ass, Dr. Ben Carson could not separate your stupid asses.
You’ve fucked up the country. And if we don’t don’t completely obliterate your level of ignorance, in power, we will certainly fall. Begone you dangerous bastard.
Meds. Take your meds.
idiot
AT&T did this willingly? How can we blame the government for that?