Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#2Worse, a number of ISPs use Telstra's lines, eg. iiNet, Internode, TPG. I have no idea if that agreement also covered others using the same cables.
(Telstra was government-owned until it was privatised from 1997-2000, and as such has a monopoly on most of the phone lines; the government sets the wholesale rates at which the lines are leased to other companies. Optus ran a bunch of their own cables, but the coverage isn't nearly as extensive.)
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#3One commenter there wrote and I'd like to read some reasonable answer to that:
This is old news, obviously no one watched 4 Corners years ago – I think 15 – 20 yrs ago. I think it was about a program called Echelon. Remember the time a New Zealander broke into one of those unmanned “Pine Gap” sites (in NZ) and found mainframe computers downloading telecommunications data. Did we care then?
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#4Worse, a number of ISPs use Telstra's lines, eg. iiNet, Internode, TPG. I have no idea if that agreement also covered others using the same cables. (Telstra was government-owned until it was privatised from 1997-2000, and as such has a monopoly on most of the phone lines; the government sets the wholesale rates at which the lines are leased to other companies. Optus ran a bunch of their own cables, but the coverage i…
At least when running on Internode hardware, the traffic only runs on Telstra copper; once terminated at the exchange (on Agile/Internode DSLAM), it pushes out into Internode's backhaul/network. (It's a moot point if the backhaul is Telstra owned I guess, or significant parts of the private network is leased from Telstra...)
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#5Note that Telstra was once owned by the Australian government. Recently their stake was reduced to about 10% (according to wikipedia) but IMO the Aussie government still dictates a lot of what Telstra can do.
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#6Worse, a number of ISPs use Telstra's lines, eg. iiNet, Internode, TPG. I have no idea if that agreement also covered others using the same cables. (Telstra was government-owned until it was privatised from 1997-2000, and as such has a monopoly on most of the phone lines; the government sets the wholesale rates at which the lines are leased to other companies. Optus ran a bunch of their own cables, but the coverage i…
Still worse, as mandated by the Australian government, won't all internet traffic eventually switch over to the new government owned/controlled FTTP and wireless infrastructure of the National Broadband Network?
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#7One commenter there wrote and I'd like to read some reasonable answer to that: This is old news, obviously no one watched 4 Corners years ago – I think 15 – 20 yrs ago. I think it was about a program called Echelon. Remember the time a New Zealander broke into one of those unmanned “Pine Gap” sites (in NZ) and found mainframe computers downloading telecommunications data. Did we care then?
Maybe nobody cared because nobody figured they'd be able to retain the data they captured forever, or that eventually governments would acquire enough processing bandwidth to use the captured data in near realtime.
In the age of social media, we do the public outrage thing a lot better these days, too.
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#8One commenter there wrote and I'd like to read some reasonable answer to that: This is old news, obviously no one watched 4 Corners years ago – I think 15 – 20 yrs ago. I think it was about a program called Echelon. Remember the time a New Zealander broke into one of those unmanned “Pine Gap” sites (in NZ) and found mainframe computers downloading telecommunications data. Did we care then?
Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, except for a few IT geeks.
In a 15 - 20 years from now the whole lot will have been mostly forgotten and accepted as normal.
There and more important things in the politics such as gay marriage and immigration. Try watching CNN or Fox News and ignoring technical sites. The politicians want votes, they couldn't give a shit about your privacy.
Australia and the US have been keeping call records (number called and time) for well over 20 years. I don't see how any of this is new(s).
Pine Gap is in Australia not New Zealand, not that anyone really cares. :)
And for the tedious people that want sources; Look up how General Patreus got busted with his gmail. Look up the Tampa incident and see how Australia listened into the telephone calls between the boat and Norway(or some such country). There are loads of incidents that spell this shit out but I need sleep and most people would rather watch a speech from Obama/Bush/Palin/Trump than learn what their government is really doing.
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#9One commenter there wrote and I'd like to read some reasonable answer to that: This is old news, obviously no one watched 4 Corners years ago – I think 15 – 20 yrs ago. I think it was about a program called Echelon. Remember the time a New Zealander broke into one of those unmanned “Pine Gap” sites (in NZ) and found mainframe computers downloading telecommunications data. Did we care then?
Maybe nobody cared because nobody figured they'd be able to retain the data they captured forever, or that eventually governments would acquire enough processing bandwidth to use the captured data in near realtime. In the age of social media, we do the public outrage thing a lot better these days, too.
Not to mention that we haven't seen so much blatant abuse of power then.
Re: Leading Australian Telco storing data on behalf of US government
#10One commenter there wrote and I'd like to read some reasonable answer to that: This is old news, obviously no one watched 4 Corners years ago – I think 15 – 20 yrs ago. I think it was about a program called Echelon. Remember the time a New Zealander broke into one of those unmanned “Pine Gap” sites (in NZ) and found mainframe computers downloading telecommunications data. Did we care then?
Link to radio transcript from 2000 about Echelon.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s103059.htm
Edit: pulled out a quote:
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: The existence of the Echelon network was only confirmed a few weeks ago when US National Security Agency documents were declassified. Essentially it's a surveillance network capable of intercepting any telephone call, fax or e-mail made on earth. Echelon is run by the US National Security Agency using satellites and ground bases in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It can sift through a million electronic messages every half hour.