[declan at well.com: [Politech] NSA surveillance: EFF lawsuit; new white paper by ACLU]

[Tyler Durden]

Huh?
Seems to me we have much more than that.

NSA may be able to tap optical cables without AT&T knowing (or with them 
looking the other way), but in general that's not the way they're going to 
eavesdrop. The only way they can cost-effectively get the access they need 
is in the electronic domain, and there's little doubt in my mind that they 
merely asked for certain traffic to be dropped-and-continued onto NSA 
gathering points.

Why?
For one, there's just no way they'd be able to deploy a duplicate optical 
network that backhauls all of the relevant traffic to NSA facilities.

They can't even secretively grab individual DS0s and backhaul them without 
cooperation. Optical span + EDFA noise budgets will first of all prohibit 
this (ie, it ain't good if your tap brings down an AT&T cross-country 
OC-192: 3 dB matters to optical amplifiers). Second, to have ready access to 
any DS0 in the country is impossible without help. Consider even a single 
128 wavelength optical cable carrying OC-192 on each lambda: they'll need a 
tap, a 128 (optically amplified) DEMUX, an OC-192 SONET terminal for EACH 
wavelength and some way to grab individual DS0s (or maybe they just take the 
DS1). And THEN they have to backhaul that somehow.

And that's just one cable.

It's just physically impossible for them to grab everything and backhaul, of 
that I am convinced. My assumption is that EFF folks in the know already 
know this. They might have even just picked AT&T nearly randomly...any of 
the big long haul carriers will have had to collude, and probably didn't 
even seriously consider not colluding.

-TD




>From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
>To: cypherpunks at jfet.org
>Subject: [declan at well.com: [Politech] NSA surveillance: EFF lawsuit; new  
>white paper by ACLU]
>Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 10:14:38 +0000
>
>----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----
>
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:33:30 -0800
>To: politech at politechbot.com
>Subject: [Politech] NSA surveillance: EFF lawsuit; new white paper by ACLU
>User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Macintosh/20050716)
>
>EFF has sued AT&T over its alleged participation in the NSA's
>surveillance scheme:
>http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6033501.html
>
>Complaint:
>http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/att-complaint.pdf
>
>BTW I think the ACLU's map (below) is intended to be more fanciful than
>based on any confirmed participation by U.S. telecom or Internet companies.
>
>The closest we've come to actual confirmation was a paragraph buried in
>the middle of a Los Angeles Times article last month about AT&T,
>mirrored here and cited in the EFF suit:
>http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=122448
>
>Am I missing something?
>
>-Declan
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: New NSA Spying Map and White Paper
>Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:03:56 -0500
>From: Barry Steinhardt <bsteinhardt at aclu.org>
>To: declan at well.com
>
>Declan,
>
>
>Politechicals may be interested in a new ACLU white paper and
>interactive map detailing  what is known and suspected about how the
>NSA's illegal spying on Americans occurs and where the interceptions
>are likely taking place..  The white paper is entitled "Eavesdropping
>101: What Can the NSA Do?" It looks at the probable connections that
>   the NSA has made to the U.S. civilian communications
>infrastructure.  The map shows how the NSA's "surveillance
>octopus"  likely entangles the country. We believe it is the
>first effort to visually illustrate what is happening.
>
>You can find both the white paper and the map at
><http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23989res20060131.html>http://www.aclu
>.org/safefree/nsaspying/23989res20060131.html>http://www.aclu.org/safefree/ns
>aspying/23989res20060131.html.
>
>A complete range of materials can be found at www.nsawatch.org.
>
>Barry Steinhardt
>
>Director
>Technology and Liberty Project
>American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
>
>_______________________________________________
>Politech mailing list
>Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>--
>Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
>______________________________________________________________
>ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
>8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
>
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