[IP] EFF: Secret Surveillance Evidence Unsealed in AT&T Spying Cas

[coderman]

On 6/13/07, Tyler Durden <camera_lumina at hotmail.com> wrote:
> First of all, anyone have the latest word about Cryptome?

what?


> Second of all, I took a look at these and what's becomming quite clear is
> that they don't really say that much. They basically just show how the LGXs
> are connected and interface into and out of the "secret room" via
> splitters.* It does say that a buttload of traffic is being split and sent
> off to NSA equipmet ...

right.  tap all the interesting fibers, feed to narus.


> but the real missing piece is just how that traffic
> gets back to NSA. I still believe that they just can't send back EVERYTHING,
> and have to have several layers of prioritzation, so that only fairly
> interesting traffic makes it back in real time (this is not to say that they
> don't possibly route and store uninteresting local traffic for future
> reference) but they can't get everything back to, for instance, DC in real
> time.

the narus is there specifically so they don't have to backhaul a
mirror of the traffic.  it does all the inspection to isolate
interesting information, then sends back that interesting information
to aggregation points, before that in turn is sent on to NSA.

the bridgeton center att noc is a good example.  there is a room
controlled by multi-factor biometric authentication (print, retinal)
with man trap doors.  this is probably the room used for distributing
configuration to the remote monitoring points (it's unlikely they
store much of interest at the remote sites, since the security is much
lower at these places) as well as aggregation of the feeds for
backhaul to NSA.

see also the new NSA facilities being built in denver, CO.  this is an
ideal place to aggregate traffic across the country...


> Another question I've had for a while is how they get around the loss
> budgets in certain cases. Dropping a 3dB splitter into an OC-48 signal
> that's pushed to the limit will result in some signficant BER degredation.
> Do they just avoid those signals? DO they put in some kind of in-line
> optical amplifier? (That's not trivial, as they have to electrically power
> such a device.)

from the sounds of it, the taps did introduce some problems which were
resolved quickly.  probably not from signal loss, but who knows.

in any case, i don't think powering an optical amplifier is difficult
in the facilities in question.  for transoceanic cables it becomes a
bigger problem  :)

best regards,