[Tfug] The NET

[Stephen Hooper]

> Why the hell would you even need to monitor machine by machine when the
> backbones will give you access to the routers?
>

That is a fine point.

> >From Wikipedia, on the NSA Call Database article -
>
> "On May 22, 2006, it was revealed by investigative reporter Seymour
> Hersh<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh>and Wired
> magazine <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_%28magazine%29> that the
> program involved the NSA setting up
> splitters<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter>to the routing
> cores of many telecoms companies and to major Internet
> traffic hubs. These provided a direct
> connection<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_noir>to the NSA
> headquarters for most
> U.S. telecoms communications and all Internet traffic. The NSA used them to
> eavesdrop and order police investigations of tens of thousands of ordinary
> Americans without judicial warrants.
>
> According to a security consultant who worked on the program, "What the
> companies are doing is worse than turning over records... They're providing
> total access to all the data", and a former senior intelligence official
> said, "This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in
> alphabetical order... The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable
> intelligence." "
>

Yes, this is another reason why targetting individuals on the massive
scale that was suggested by the first "conspiracy" makes no sense.  It
is easier to target the service providers of the specific services
that you are interested in making criminal, or gleaning information
about.

That was what I was trying to argue about the banks: does it make more
sense for me to listen to everybody in the hopes that someone makes a
phone call to Afghanistan, or does it make more sense for me to ask
the phone company to tell me all the people who have ever made a phone
call to Afghanistan?

If I listened in on a hundred people, I am sure I would hear something
illegal.  I am also sure that I would be able to do something with
that information.  But to claim that that protects me against crime
seems to me to be imbecility itself.