AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens

1prophet

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
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534
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AT&T Deploys Government Spy Gear on WorldNet Network

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

According to this article its the entire internet they are spying on, but I guess if you have nothing to hide why should you be concerned.;)

It's not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on -- it's the entire internet
The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool
"Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record," says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls."
 

Check

Senior member
Nov 6, 2000
367
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Wow, those guys must be monitoring a whole ****** load of porn traffic.



Lucky bastards...
 

her209

No Lifer
Oct 11, 2000
56,352
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I could have sworn there was someone on this board who knew someone who worked as a tech at AT&T and knew about this.
 

Rainsford

Lifer
Apr 25, 2001
17,515
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I'm not sure how a setup like that would allow them to "spy on the entire internet". Ignoring for a moment the computing logistics of doing such a thing (12 racks of equipment could not possibly filter or store anywhere near all internet traffic), the equipment could only spy on data being routed through that part of the network. Not to say that nothing is going on, or that whatever it is couldn't be a big deal, but let's at least try to stick with reality for at least a little while.
 

1prophet

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
5,313
534
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Originally posted by: Rainsford
I'm not sure how a setup like that would allow them to "spy on the entire internet". Ignoring for a moment the computing logistics of doing such a thing (12 racks of equipment could not possibly filter or store anywhere near all internet traffic), the equipment could only spy on data being routed through that part of the network. Not to say that nothing is going on, or that whatever it is couldn't be a big deal, but let's at least try to stick with reality for at least a little while.

From the rest of the article:

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.
 

imported_Aelius

Golden Member
Apr 25, 2004
1,988
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Automatic violation of the 4th Amendment and probably a few hundred/thousand other local, state and federal laws on how many billions of counts?

Safe to say whomever authorized this, his boss, the boss' boss and everybody knowing about it could, would and SHOULD spend their remaining lives in prison. Damn that must be a f#cking long list going through both major parties, house, senate and leading all the way to where the buck stops.

That would be the one and only deterent from having this happening ever again.

Accountability? What accountability? Who is going to put the entire government lock stock and barrel in prison?

Short of citizens marching in the streets by the millions I don't see it ever happening and they will get away with raping our private lives for as long as we live.

Fun huh?

Makes me wonder if it's being done in Canada.... who am I kidding.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
54,894
47
91
www.alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: 1prophet
AT&T Deploys Government Spy Gear on WorldNet Network

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits.

(The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
Since someone obviously outted the info above I can concur.

There was someone on here doubting I installed the said equipment.

 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Originally posted by: Rainsford
I'm not sure how a setup like that would allow them to "spy on the entire internet". Ignoring for a moment the computing logistics of doing such a thing (12 racks of equipment could not possibly filter or store anywhere near all internet traffic), the equipment could only spy on data being routed through that part of the network. Not to say that nothing is going on, or that whatever it is couldn't be a big deal, but let's at least try to stick with reality for at least a little while.

Putting the gear at the major peering points would capture most internet traffic in the US.

Also it wouldn't be difficult at all to do so and filter/store the information you wanted.