All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400

[paularoid]

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/8/14724/28476/

All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
by bewert
Fri Apr 07, 2006 at 10:47:24 PM PDT

Earlier today we found out that the EFF had sued AT&T over their secret work with the NSA on surveillance of millions of US citizens without wiretaps. We learned that paragraph 65 of this complaint shows EFF is trying to turn it into a nationwide Class Action suit covering all current and former customers (any after 9/2001) of AT&T. And we learned that a retired AT&T technician had stepped forward and disclosed the installation of secret NSA spy equipment in the San Francisco trunk facility. As well as the belief that similar equipment is in place in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Specifically, this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000, and capturing anything that hits its' semantic (i.e. the meaning of the content) triggers. The latest generation is called NarusInsight, capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second.

Follow me over the jump and let's learn some more about the private company Narus, it's founder Ovi Cohen, and board member Bill Crowell. Shall we?

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/8/14724/28476/
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[DaveM]

The news came out yesterday that Qwest (my phone company, as it happens) refused to turn customers' phone records over to the NSA and continues to do so. No doubt that did little to prevent monitoring, but just now I believe I may send a thank you letter to Qwest.

Interesting that every other phone company apparently knuckled under without question to a blatantly unlawful "request".

[Green Monkey]

The news came out yesterday that Qwest (my phone company, as it happens) refused to turn customers' phone records over to the NSA and continues to do so. No doubt that did little to prevent monitoring, but just now I believe I may send a thank you letter to Qwest.

Interesting that every other phone company apparently knuckled under without question to a blatantly unlawful "request".Qwest is my provider as well, but I won't be cutting them any slack just because they did *one* thing right. Qwest is easily the worst of the old RBOC's, and due to the manipulations of Joe Nacchio and his gang of thieves: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2005-36.htm

Qwest service is terrible, around here (CO) its alternate name is QWorst. When they were my DSL provider, I had no end of trouble with their DSL service, it never worked right, which is funny because I am very close to the branch trunk building.

Nope, no thanks to Qworst from me. And, btw, you can rest assured that if you called outside of Qwest's service area (like interstate to the coasts), then you call info was coughed up by one of the other players. :mad:

GM

[paularoid]

I contemplated about where to actually post this thing for what should be obvious reasons. I decided to post it here in "Geek-O-Rama" because of the "geekiness" of the system itself used. It would appear that I was incorrect in that assessment. :rolleyes:

And thanks for the reminder GM. Here where we are, we -were- contemplating a switch from ATT to QWest. Further consideration is obviously warranted.
.

[DaveM]

I'm familiar with their DSL service and its reputation--it's about the only high-speed available here right now, but I am waiting for a better provider.

My hope is that the cell phone companies will get wise and offer an all-wireless high-speed Internet connection at some point. As far as I know, they've already got the infrastructure in place....all they have to do is add the service, unless it's one of those things the FCC has a problem with (sigh).