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AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

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Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#171

Post by joelhaasnoot »

Glide wrote: post #164
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, oh yes, the government always does the right thing...

As korean american, I would love if you would qualify your statement about Korea.

War is still war, there were deaths, veterans who weren't the same, etc etc. I'm a child of the 80s, so I can't say I remember the details, but war isn't always a pretty thing. Going by what Wikipedia says (yes, I know it's a single source), the US wasn't exactly smart about how it was handled leading up to the Korean war.

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#172

Post by technomancy »

rd108 wrote: post #104
trotsky wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee

worse than that- AT&T is buying T-mobile apparently.

T-Mobile was the only telco that has avoided logging the goods that the feds want: http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/03/negative-impact-of-at-pu...

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#173

Post by technomancy »

wtn wrote: post #34
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if because AT&T was the only bunch of idiots dumb enough to get caught that it's safe or reasonable to assume the VZW and others aren't doing the same.

There's definitely evidence VZW did the same. I used T-Mobile for years because they were the only ones that there wasn't much evidence against, plus I thought the parent company was a bit more credible, but it's all a black box from the user's perspective.

I wonder if T-Mobile being German-owned had anything to do with that.

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#174

Post by neilk »

holdenc wrote: post #46
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #3

This is literally years-old information. I was aware of and hollering about this at people as a highschooler at debate and speech tournaments. Same thing then as now, no one cares, or those that do care don't care enough. Besides, who cares if you have nothing to hide. Right?

In principal it's quite wrong and scary, but in reality I have to believe the government is too incompetent to actually do anything with their mountains of AT&T collected data.

Government incompetence should not comfort you.

Go rent the movie Brazil. It's a movie about what would happen in a society with strongly defined elites and suffocating bureaucracy, dominated by a fear of terrorism, practicing torture in secret. The information professional class is relatively privileged, although oppressed at the workplace like everyone else. For fun some can snoop on citizens at will. Yeah I know, it's science fiction, but it could happen some day.

The entire plot is set in motion when a fly falls into a mechanical typewriter and causes the government agents to break into the house of Archibald Buttle (instead of Tuttle).

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#175

Post by nir »

mseebach wrote: post #168
nir wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, baby boomers have been famous for trusting the government. Especially on Vietnam.

Baby boomers were anti-establishment, right up until they became the establishment. That's where the "neo" in neocon comes from.

Baby boomers actually have little to do with Neocon ideology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism#History_and_ori...

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#176

Post by sabat »

spindritf wrote: post #92
sabat wrote: post #64

... but corporations are A-OK. It's the government that's the problem. Right?

Actually, yes. Corporations are A-moral and the government is the problem. Just look where this traffic is allegedly going.

Corporations run the government. Don't forget that.

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#177

Post by __david__ »

aantix wrote: post #166
fingerprinter wrote: post #21

One thing I see people saying on here is that people should care....and I do...but I don't know _what_ to do with it! Can someone show/tell me what I, an average person, can do? It feels a bit overwhelming and things like this point out how powerless we really are. I hope I'm wrong and there are things we can do...I just don't know what they are. EDIT - Asking two more specific questions: 1. What can we do technicall…

#2 - What about writing some sort of client that sends data with sensitive phrases to overwhelm the system with false positives?

It's called "spook". In Emacs, "M-x spook":

cryptanalysis Roswell blackjack Exon Shell Ruby Ridge NORAD Al Jazeera world domination Becker cybercash nuclear csim SHA Leuken-Baden BLU-114/B

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#178

Post by wtn »

gcb wrote: post #158
tesseract wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul all did.

I confess i wasn't living in the US during the last elections, so i only followed the elections from international news sources. and i have no idea what those names means (paul i may have heard about while reading slash dot) That also reminds me of that simpsons episode where the aliens take place of the democrat and republican candidates, and when they discover they are aliens trying to take over earth, someone shou…

VOTE KANG

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#179

Post by totalforge »

The NSA are drowning in data. They have a constantly changing target list from the other intelligence agencies, and whatever crisis is, or will soon be in the news is keeping them quite busy.

They really have more important things to do than monitor the geeks. Unless you come up with some nifty new crypto.

p.s. SPLITTER!

Re: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA

#180

Post by __david__ »

tjarratt wrote: post #169
aantix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 - What about writing some sort of client that sends data with sensitive phrases to overwhelm the system with false positives?

That could be construed as a denial of service attack and would be illegal (or at least in a very murky legal grey area). Also you seem to have forgot that most AT&T customers have bandwidth caps in place that would make it difficult for them to run this attack in the first place.

The idea isn't to spew data at AT&T like a DoS, just taint all your boring communication to make them have to sift through more junk. For example, add extra "scary" keywords in your outgoing HTTP headers.

  X-Spook: Hamas subversive War on Terrorism Kosovo Delta Force
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