Gov Deep Net Monitoring

[John Young]

An anonymous ISP representative responds to "ISPs 
Not Filtering Viruses:"

A major US ISP which is a subsidiary of a foreign corporation 
hosts a US government operation to monitor *all* traffic handled 
by the ISP at a central network operations center. This operation 
was set up as a condition for the foreign corporation to acquire 
the ISP and as far as known is not the result of a court order. 
No officer or employee of the foreign corporation or the ISP 
subsidiary has access to or control over the operation. Traffic
is monitored by personnel who have security clearances for 
handling confidential information acquired by monitoring. 
Streaming data may be searched for key words or other 
information, collected and transmitted to the sponsoring agency
for analysis and evaluation.

The representative claims that another US government 
surveillance activity set up after September 11 is for ISPs to 
host sites set up to offer information likely to be sought by 
terrorists, such as detailed airline schedules or other 
dangerous information. The logs of access to these sites 
are copied to CDs daily and sent to the supervising agency. 
ISP personnel are forbidden to monitor the sites or examine 
the logs. Numerous US ISPs are allegedly involved in this 
activity. As far as known this activity is not the result of a 
court order.

Cryptome would appreciate learning more about such 
non-court-ordered governmental Internet monitoring for 
publication. In particular, leads on information on the 
central monitoring operation at the foreign-owned ISP -- 
which sounds like a description of Verio, Cryptome's 
host, now owned by Japan's NTT Corporation. At the 
time of NTT's purchase of Verio, there were news reports
of FBI objection to the sale unless arrangements were 
made to prevent foreign espionage and to avoid 
interference with lawful interceptions.

Anonymous contributions welcomed. Encrypt if preferred. 
Public key on Cryptome home page.