[287] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Tapping Every Phone Call in the Country -- Redux
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Tue Oct 16 13:50:24 2007
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Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:58:15 -0700
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Tapping Every Phone Call in the Country -- Redux
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000315.html
Greetings. Now it becomes crystal clear why the phone companies
have been begging to be indemnified for past participation in
illegal wiretapping and subscriber transactional data disclosures --
it's obviously been going on massively for years -- as many of us
have long suspected.
Today's Washington Post explores Verizon's admission that they've
been handing over customer calling data without court orders for
ages ( http://tinyurl.com/2brmh2 ).
Perhaps even more interesting is the news that the feds had also
wanted the numbers being called by the people called by the targets
of interest. That is, if person A was the target, and he called
entity B (which might be a person or a business, of course),
investigators also wanted the lists of everyone being called by
entity B. When you work out the math, this is an utterly astounding
way to drag vast numbers of innocent persons into such
investigations. Verizon claimed not to have the necessary data to
provide this secondary "community of interest" data, but the very
fact that the government requested it speaks volumes. And who knows
what was going on with AT&T?
Actually, we do seem to know a bit more about Qwest and AT&T now --
though both are currently refusing to answer Congressional queries
about their participation in the various illegal programs. Their
defense? "The government prohibits us from telling you the truth."
Gotta love those guys.
Now it turns out that according to the former CEO of Qwest and other
sources, the feds were busily laying the groundwork for these
illicit operations months *before* 9/11. Fascinating.
In light of all this, I can't help but wonder if my thoughts last
year about "How to Tap Every Phone Call in the Country"
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000177.html ) might be far
less speculative than I thought at the time. We have more evidence
than ever that the sensibilities behind interactions between
government and telcos might have encouraged such an approach.
Do I really think that wiretapping on such a scale is going on? No,
I don't. But what's disturbing is that I believe that the federal
government -- our federal government -- would not be unwilling to
explore such an approach.
That's pretty scary, in and of itself.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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