Why? Because it’s fun… Anyway, looks like the NSA could be hacking the Internet. Okay, technically the activity alleged is packet sniffing on a router network that covers about 1/3 of Internet traffic. I think the FBI would have some serious words with anyone who tried something like this and was not the NSA. You know, of the “no contact with a computer for 20 years” kind.
“The nature of the government operation using the Bridgeton room remains unknown, and could be legal. Aside from surveillance or data collection, the room could conceivably house a federal law enforcement operation, a classified research project, or some other unknown government operation.
The former workers, both of whom were approached by and spoke separately to Salon, asked to remain anonymous because they still work in the telecommunications industry. They both left the company in good standing. Neither worked inside the secured room or has access to classified information. One worked in AT&T’s broadband division until 2003. The other asked to be identified only as a network technician, and worked at Bridgeton for about three years.”
So neither actually saw inside the room, saw data on the room, knew the purpose of the room, or the overall function of the operations, if any, taking place in the room.
So in short, the story is, “Scary looking room at AT&T Hub.”
From the article:
“If the NSA is using the secret room, it would appear to bolster recent allegations that the agency has been conducting broad and possibly illegal domestic surveillance and data collection operations authorized by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. AT&T’s Bridgeton location would give the NSA potential access to an enormous amount of Internet data — currently, the telecom giant controls approximately one-third of all bandwidth carrying Internet traffic to homes and businesses across the United States.”
Yet I love how they gloss over this little item they spoke about in the just the previous paragraph:
“According to one of the former workers, Bridgeton serves as the technical command center from which the company manages all the routers and circuits carrying the company’s domestic and international Internet traffic.”
International traffic too, huh? So I guess it doesn’t bolster those arguments anymore than it bolster’s the argument that it would only look at international traffic.
And of course, both previous AT&T sources are anonymous.
Considering the Bush Administration has threatened to charge people with felonies for talking to the press about anything even remotely related to national security, do you blame them for being anonymous?
Oh, you mean actually prosecuting people who commit felonies by disclosing classified information, as they fully well they know they are doing.
But how about this Angry? NEITHER ONE IS A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. Both are ex-AT&T employees, not AT&T ones. And by their admission, they don’t have any classified information. So what exactly would they be charge with?
dcl -
Granted, I didn’t intend to make my post sound like one big indictment of you, my apologies if it came across that way. It was more of an indictment of the article. Besides, I recall reading this in Wired! earlier this year (around March I think) about a month before the whole NSA phone call data mining brouhaha. Not really a scoop.
“And by their admission, they don’t have any classified information. So what exactly would they be charge with?”
You tell me. The Bush Administration loves using Nixonian intimidation tactics that have no basis in law or public transparency. It wouldn’t be beyond them to go after people for basically nothing (remember when they tried to get the death penalty for the Muslim cleric at GITMO and the best they could muster in the end was a convoluted discharge from the service? Didn’t prevent them from trying to get the dude executed over “internet porn” or some bogus charge they came up with.)
ssh and pgp/gpg are useful in situations such as this. Some might speculate that the NSA has a way to break RSA encryption, but tens of thousands of very good mathematicians would be surprised.
No sir. If your going to say they had a reasonable reason to be anonymous to avoid government reprisal and then can’t even point to any danger of reprisal, it doesn’t count.
Start listing the ‘Nixonian’ intimidation tactics we’re talking about. Let’s get specific, Hoss.
As for the muslim Airman and Chaplain, I am waiting for you to make the point of how a screwed-up airforce investigation is really the nefarious plans of George Bush who seeks to run all the muslims out of the armed forces.
Wasn’t there a law which proposed tough penalites if, in the event of hacking someone else’s system, someone got injured or died. I don’t know how someone could die from a good hacking, but I guess in the realm of today’s society everything and anything is possible.
Maybe in the medical field. I am talking out my ass here, but if a hacker crashed medical systems at Whosiefutzitz County Hospital, it could cause physical harm or death to patients.
I don’t know medical technologies or networks so can someone help here? Are these machines, for lack of a better term, wired?
Gee. I dunno. Maybe trying to get the FCC to revoke the Washington Post’s licenses for stations it owned at the time. That, or firing special prosecutors until he got Bobby Bork. Or using the FBI for black bag jobs on Nixon’s list of enemies. You want more?
As for Chaplain Yee, last time I looked the civilian leadership of the Bush Administration was in charge of the military. I can’t explain what the motivation was for these trumped up charges, besides the fact that Yee was complaining about the conditions at GITMO up the chain of command and then apparently somebody up the chain didn’t like what they were hearing.
NO angrier, what ‘Nixonian’ tactics is the BUSH administration using. To Quoth the Angry One:
“The Bush Administration loves using Nixonian intimidation tactics that have no basis in law or public transparency.”
I want the BUSH examples of what they are doing, not what Nixon did.
And civilian leadership means that the President orders around the military, you are correct. But last I checked, that doesn’t make him culpable for the actions of any one soldier. Are you about to produce evidence that he ordered somebody to keep Yee quiet? Of course not. Won’t stop you from insinuating it, obviously as you say, “Well, of course there’s no evidence. Its a conspiracy!!!”
I’ve read Yee’s and Halabi’s case and all I see is overzealous prosecutors for the Airforce who thought they had some big spy ring to Syria, facts proved them to be uniformly wrong, and then refuse to own up to their mistake.
But your argument is that because Yee had some criticism for Gitmo, that miraculously made it all the way to Bush ears, he order a crackdown on two muslim soldiers that involves virtually huge swaths of military investigators and lawyers to engage in a phony case that would hurt their own careers, and would fall apart utterly as soon as it reach court.
Just to quiet some internal criticism. Boy, you really thought that one out.
Medical information is indeed a realistic way someone could die as the result of hacking. It doesn’t even require that the person be hooked up to some fancy piece of electronics. A simple alteration of current medications or known allergies could cause a patient to be prescribed something that will kill him/her–there’s a reason why one of the first questions asked of conscious patients in emergency care is whether they know of any drug allergies. This, in turn, means that you don’t even necessarily hack into a hospital network. There are at least some people who see multiple physicians but use a single pharmacy, and places like Walgreens maintain their own databases of what medications individuals have been prescribed which flash warnings to the pharmacist if there are known interactions between them–and the only reason that such systems are workable is that the company maintains a central database accessed by all of the individual branches. It seems highly unlikely that such pharmacies run their own lines with computers that are connected directly to each other and nothing else, which would mean that there are potential access points out there.
“Medical information is indeed a realistic way someone could die as the result of hacking. “
Ironic to be discussing this, when the two soldiers prominently in the news are said to have died as a result of severe non-medical-information hacking …
June 21st, 2006 at 9:50:02 am
From the article:
“The nature of the government operation using the Bridgeton room remains unknown, and could be legal. Aside from surveillance or data collection, the room could conceivably house a federal law enforcement operation, a classified research project, or some other unknown government operation.
The former workers, both of whom were approached by and spoke separately to Salon, asked to remain anonymous because they still work in the telecommunications industry. They both left the company in good standing. Neither worked inside the secured room or has access to classified information. One worked in AT&T’s broadband division until 2003. The other asked to be identified only as a network technician, and worked at Bridgeton for about three years.”
So neither actually saw inside the room, saw data on the room, knew the purpose of the room, or the overall function of the operations, if any, taking place in the room.
So in short, the story is, “Scary looking room at AT&T Hub.”
From the article:
“If the NSA is using the secret room, it would appear to bolster recent allegations that the agency has been conducting broad and possibly illegal domestic surveillance and data collection operations authorized by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. AT&T’s Bridgeton location would give the NSA potential access to an enormous amount of Internet data — currently, the telecom giant controls approximately one-third of all bandwidth carrying Internet traffic to homes and businesses across the United States.”
Yet I love how they gloss over this little item they spoke about in the just the previous paragraph:
“According to one of the former workers, Bridgeton serves as the technical command center from which the company manages all the routers and circuits carrying the company’s domestic and international Internet traffic.”
International traffic too, huh? So I guess it doesn’t bolster those arguments anymore than it bolster’s the argument that it would only look at international traffic.
And of course, both previous AT&T sources are anonymous.
June 21st, 2006 at 10:31:01 am
I believe there is a reason I titled this post rumor mongering…
June 21st, 2006 at 10:52:38 am
Lojo-
Considering the Bush Administration has threatened to charge people with felonies for talking to the press about anything even remotely related to national security, do you blame them for being anonymous?
June 21st, 2006 at 11:01:29 am
Angrier -
Oh, you mean actually prosecuting people who commit felonies by disclosing classified information, as they fully well they know they are doing.
But how about this Angry? NEITHER ONE IS A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. Both are ex-AT&T employees, not AT&T ones. And by their admission, they don’t have any classified information. So what exactly would they be charge with?
dcl -
Granted, I didn’t intend to make my post sound like one big indictment of you, my apologies if it came across that way. It was more of an indictment of the article. Besides, I recall reading this in Wired! earlier this year (around March I think) about a month before the whole NSA phone call data mining brouhaha. Not really a scoop.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:02:12 am
Correction:
Should read -
Both are ex-AT&T employees, not NSA ones.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:38:19 am
“And by their admission, they don’t have any classified information. So what exactly would they be charge with?”
You tell me. The Bush Administration loves using Nixonian intimidation tactics that have no basis in law or public transparency. It wouldn’t be beyond them to go after people for basically nothing (remember when they tried to get the death penalty for the Muslim cleric at GITMO and the best they could muster in the end was a convoluted discharge from the service? Didn’t prevent them from trying to get the dude executed over “internet porn” or some bogus charge they came up with.)
June 21st, 2006 at 11:40:53 am
Yea, I’m sure George Bush sat in the Oval Office and personally directed the prosecution of the Army cleric…
June 21st, 2006 at 11:51:20 am
ssh and pgp/gpg are useful in situations such as this. Some might speculate that the NSA has a way to break RSA encryption, but tens of thousands of very good mathematicians would be surprised.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:06:26 pm
Angrier -
No sir. If your going to say they had a reasonable reason to be anonymous to avoid government reprisal and then can’t even point to any danger of reprisal, it doesn’t count.
Start listing the ‘Nixonian’ intimidation tactics we’re talking about. Let’s get specific, Hoss.
As for the muslim Airman and Chaplain, I am waiting for you to make the point of how a screwed-up airforce investigation is really the nefarious plans of George Bush who seeks to run all the muslims out of the armed forces.
June 21st, 2006 at 12:50:46 pm
Wasn’t there a law which proposed tough penalites if, in the event of hacking someone else’s system, someone got injured or died. I don’t know how someone could die from a good hacking, but I guess in the realm of today’s society everything and anything is possible.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:08:49 pm
uscroger -
Maybe in the medical field. I am talking out my ass here, but if a hacker crashed medical systems at Whosiefutzitz County Hospital, it could cause physical harm or death to patients.
I don’t know medical technologies or networks so can someone help here? Are these machines, for lack of a better term, wired?
June 21st, 2006 at 1:21:50 pm
Lojo-
Gee. I dunno. Maybe trying to get the FCC to revoke the Washington Post’s licenses for stations it owned at the time. That, or firing special prosecutors until he got Bobby Bork. Or using the FBI for black bag jobs on Nixon’s list of enemies. You want more?
As for Chaplain Yee, last time I looked the civilian leadership of the Bush Administration was in charge of the military. I can’t explain what the motivation was for these trumped up charges, besides the fact that Yee was complaining about the conditions at GITMO up the chain of command and then apparently somebody up the chain didn’t like what they were hearing.
June 21st, 2006 at 1:44:12 pm
Lojo - A&A was talking about Travelgate - but he’s too much of a gentleman to say anything so factual about New York’s junior carpetbagger …
June 21st, 2006 at 2:01:23 pm
Angrier -
NO angrier, what ‘Nixonian’ tactics is the BUSH administration using. To Quoth the Angry One:
“The Bush Administration loves using Nixonian intimidation tactics that have no basis in law or public transparency.”
I want the BUSH examples of what they are doing, not what Nixon did.
And civilian leadership means that the President orders around the military, you are correct. But last I checked, that doesn’t make him culpable for the actions of any one soldier. Are you about to produce evidence that he ordered somebody to keep Yee quiet? Of course not. Won’t stop you from insinuating it, obviously as you say, “Well, of course there’s no evidence. Its a conspiracy!!!”
I’ve read Yee’s and Halabi’s case and all I see is overzealous prosecutors for the Airforce who thought they had some big spy ring to Syria, facts proved them to be uniformly wrong, and then refuse to own up to their mistake.
But your argument is that because Yee had some criticism for Gitmo, that miraculously made it all the way to Bush ears, he order a crackdown on two muslim soldiers that involves virtually huge swaths of military investigators and lawyers to engage in a phony case that would hurt their own careers, and would fall apart utterly as soon as it reach court.
Just to quiet some internal criticism. Boy, you really thought that one out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_Razor
When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:44:41 pm
Medical information is indeed a realistic way someone could die as the result of hacking. It doesn’t even require that the person be hooked up to some fancy piece of electronics. A simple alteration of current medications or known allergies could cause a patient to be prescribed something that will kill him/her–there’s a reason why one of the first questions asked of conscious patients in emergency care is whether they know of any drug allergies. This, in turn, means that you don’t even necessarily hack into a hospital network. There are at least some people who see multiple physicians but use a single pharmacy, and places like Walgreens maintain their own databases of what medications individuals have been prescribed which flash warnings to the pharmacist if there are known interactions between them–and the only reason that such systems are workable is that the company maintains a central database accessed by all of the individual branches. It seems highly unlikely that such pharmacies run their own lines with computers that are connected directly to each other and nothing else, which would mean that there are potential access points out there.
June 21st, 2006 at 3:57:59 pm
“Medical information is indeed a realistic way someone could die as the result of hacking. “
Ironic to be discussing this, when the two soldiers prominently in the news are said to have died as a result of severe non-medical-information hacking …
June 21st, 2006 at 3:58:30 pm
Mike -
Thanks, completely forgot about the pharmacies.