At 10:58 AM 2/14/98 -0800, you wrote:

(I was told by a usually reliable source that AT&T rerouted some of their Long Lines to cross Indian reservations...thus allowing interception by the TLAs without violating the laws about domestic surveillance. Is this true? I haven't done any research to try to verify this, but it wouldn't surprise me. The UK-USA agreement is already a way to circumvent the "no domestic surveillance without a court order" laws, as we all know by now.)

I haven't a clue who to ask, but it would surprise me a bit. [#disclaimer: personal opinion only, not AT&T's] If it was done, it would have been for microwave lines, which are mostly obsolete except in places like Southern Utah and parts of Montana and the Dakotas which don't have enough population density to justify replacing with fiber. Much more likely they were routed through reservations for cheap right of way. Most of the routes have been pretty stable for a long time, because of right-of-way issues, and many of them date from back before the FBI and CIA worried about little details like Constitutionality and different rules on Indian reservations. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639