There for 100 Years

[DC Tom]

?

 

The Independent claimed they were leaked info on a secret plan...that's apparently so secret that al-Sadr is protesting it (but only once a week) and you found an article in the NY Times on it back in 2003.

 

That doesn't say a whole hell of a lot for the integrity of the Independent's reporting, does it?

[Steely Dan]

Doesn't prove anything one way or another but it's interesting and relates to this topic.

 

Linkage

 

June 6th, 2008

State Dept.: No secrets on long-term agreements with Iraq

Posted: 05:02 PM ET

 

From CNN’s Charley Keyes

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. State Department is pledging “no secrets” on its long term agreements with Iraq, and says it will keep Congress informed as well.

 

“Of course” the department will reply to a letter from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and three other senior members of the committee from both parties, said spokesman Sean McCormack. In the letter, the senators ask for “detailed consultations” with both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates about agreements being negotiated with Iraq.

 

McCormack said there already have been extensive, serious initial consultations. “We are committed to a transparent kind of cooperation with Capitol Hill to update them on where we are on these consultations,” he said at his midday briefing.

[DC Tom]

Doesn't prove anything one way or another but it's interesting and relates to this topic.

 

Linkage

 

June 6th, 2008

State Dept.: No secrets on long-term agreements with Iraq

Posted: 05:02 PM ET

 

From CNN’s Charley Keyes

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. State Department is pledging “no secrets” on its long term agreements with Iraq, and says it will keep Congress informed as well.

 

“Of course” the department will reply to a letter from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and three other senior members of the committee from both parties, said spokesman Sean McCormack. In the letter, the senators ask for “detailed consultations” with both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates about agreements being negotiated with Iraq.

 

McCormack said there already have been extensive, serious initial consultations. “We are committed to a transparent kind of cooperation with Capitol Hill to update them on where we are on these consultations,” he said at his midday briefing.

 

Right. That's consistent with the administration's strict interpretation of "separation of powers".

[Adam]

Right. That's consistent with the administration's strict interpretation of "separation of powers".

They understand very well what it means- the legislative and judicial branches have been separated from their power

[GG]

Doesn't prove anything one way or another but it's interesting and relates to this topic.

 

Linkage

 

June 6th, 2008

State Dept.: No secrets on long-term agreements with Iraq

Posted: 05:02 PM ET

 

From CNN’s Charley Keyes

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. State Department is pledging “no secrets” on its long term agreements with Iraq, and says it will keep Congress informed as well.

 

“Of course” the department will reply to a letter from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and three other senior members of the committee from both parties, said spokesman Sean McCormack. In the letter, the senators ask for “detailed consultations” with both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates about agreements being negotiated with Iraq.

 

McCormack said there already have been extensive, serious initial consultations. “We are committed to a transparent kind of cooperation with Capitol Hill to update them on where we are on these consultations,” he said at his midday briefing.

 

Just like the administration kept congressional committees and FISA court appraised of the wireless wiretapping for years, but it wasn't a serious issue with them (legislative & judicial) until someone leaked it to the press.

[DC Tom]

They understand very well what it means- the legislative and judicial branches have been separated from their power

 

Don't forget that the press has been denied their role in the constitutional government, too...

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

Just like the administration kept congressional committees and FISA court appraised of the wireless wiretapping for years, but it wasn't a serious issue with them (legislative & judicial) until someone leaked it to the press.

yes, you're right...

 

but what came out was that the NSA had built what is essentially a giant internet splitter, which enabled it to view

every single data packet and listen to every single electronic voice connection that passed across major Internet Exchange Points. That's way beyond a warrantless wiretap on Mohammed Al Sadeem or someone they suspected to be a terrorist.

[GG]

yes, you're right...

 

but what came out was that the NSA had built what is essentially a giant internet splitter, which enabled it to view

every single data packet and listen to every single electronic voice connection that passed across major Internet Exchange Points. That's way beyond a warrantless wiretap on Mohammed Al Sadeem or someone they suspected to be a terrorist.

 

Perhaps, but you'd have to provide a better link than a wiki entry of what an ISP peering point is, which has nothing to do with wiretapping international phone calls at long distance companies' switches.

[/dev/null]

Don't forget that the press has been denied their role in the constitutional government, too...

 

I beg to differ Tom. The Press has enjoyed considerable freedom to exercise their role in constitutional government.

 

They're the ones who decided that McCain, Romney, and Huckabee were the best candidates for the Republicans and Obama and Clinton were the best candidates for the Democrats

 

Paul, Gravel, Kucinich, Tancredo, etc. Eh, if they had to be allowed to debate then put them off to the side and out of the spotlight

 

The King is dead. Long live the King

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

Perhaps, but you'd have to provide a better link than a wiki entry of what an ISP peering point is, which has nothing to do with wiretapping international phone calls at long distance companies' switches.

here's a link with some more detail. An internet exchange point interconnects different web and voice traffic kinda like a gigantic intersection of networks, in that packets destined for other networks or countries are routed in and out, billions and billions of them per day. IXPs are what make the world wide web truly worldwide. There's only a handful and there's only two internet nodal points in the US, MAE WEST and MAE EAST. The objective was to peer into MAE WEST from AT&T's IXP, allowing them access to all internet traffic. If you want ugly technical details, have at it.

 

The NSA, with the cooperation of AT&T, split off a copy of all traffic that routed through the IXP so they could analyze it. That means every email, every porn pic, every IM convo, every VOIP phone call (and other traditional landline calls), etc. were visible and audible to them.

 

This has everything to do with wiretapping international phone calls at long distance companies switches. For one thing, this is where the calls are routed overseas in many cases. They used a broadly worded piece of legislation that enabled warrantless wiretapping on suspected terrorists to justify and implement nothing less than "wiretapping the internet."

[GG]

here's a link with some more detail. An internet exchange point interconnects different web and voice traffic kinda like a gigantic intersection of networks, in that packets destined for other networks or countries are routed in and out, billions and billions of them per day. IXPs are what make the world wide web truly worldwide. There's only a handful and there's only two internet nodal points in the US, MAE WEST and MAE EAST. The objective was to peer into MAE WEST from AT&T's IXP, allowing them access to all internet traffic. If you want ugly technical details, have at it.

 

The NSA, with the cooperation of AT&T, split off a copy of all traffic that routed through the IXP so they could analyze it. That means every email, every porn pic, every IM convo, every VOIP phone call (and other traditional landline calls), etc. were visible and audible to them.

 

This has everything to do with wiretapping international phone calls at long distance companies switches. For one thing, this is where the calls are routed overseas in many cases. They used a broadly worded piece of legislation that enabled warrantless wiretapping on suspected terrorists to justify and implement nothing less than "wiretapping the internet."

 

Don't want to get into the "ugly technical stuff" because they surely remind me of something that Loose Change guys would produce. I really appreciate visual evidence of NSA's secret room at AT&T's office. Don't know about you, but anytime I am in "secret" facilities, you can bet that I wouldn't be able to have the opportunity to frame a perfectly fine photograph of anything, never mind random wires hanging from a ceiling that must offer proof of secrecy. And, I've never been anywhere close to anything of a top secret level that NSA would be running.

 

But then, a question, if this guy is a "witness" in the ongoing wiretapping legal saga, why is he talking to the press about the case? Wouldn't that immediately disqualify him as a witness. But I digress again.

 

This guy is trying to use technobabble for the bilzrul set to tie NSA's ongoing surveillance work. Are we really supposed to be impressed by a system that analyzes 10 billion bits of data per second? Could that be that a system that monitors the internet is supposed to analyze things that move at Internet speed?

 

If you try to make the logical extension that the system can then be used to monitor anyone's porn viewing, the answer is, probably yes. But, the logical extension also says that NSA probably doesn't care about your porn use. They need to gather billions of data bits to see if a pattern develops to triangulate a potential threat. Catching porn purveyors is better left to NBC.

 

The question most reasonable people would use is what system would you use to carry out proper surveillance, taking into account legal precedent that privacy rights of have often been pushed aside for protection of society. Why can a cop pull you over and charge you with a DUI if you have a busted tail light and did nothing else wrong?

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

hey, good response

Don't want to get into the "ugly technical stuff" because they surely remind me of something that Loose Change guys would produce. I really appreciate visual evidence of NSA's secret room at AT&T's office. Don't know about you, but anytime I am in "secret" facilities, you can bet that I wouldn't be able to have the opportunity to frame a perfectly fine photograph of anything, never mind random wires hanging from a ceiling that must offer proof of secrecy. And, I've never been anywhere close to anything of a top secret level that NSA would be running.

ya, I hear you about getting into all the technical stuff, but there's usually some good overviews that break it down and graphics, attachments, all that. I've been inside data centers like that secret room, they actually lock you in.

 

But then, a question, if this guy is a "witness" in the ongoing wiretapping legal saga, why is he talking to the press about the case? Wouldn't that immediately disqualify him as a witness. But I digress again.

It's the EFF, he can talk about it, they like that. Gets public opinion on their side. Freaking communist liberals, kill em all.

 

This guy is trying to use technobabble for the bilzrul set to tie NSA's ongoing surveillance work. Are we really supposed to be impressed by a system that analyzes 10 billion bits of data per second? Could that be that a system that monitors the internet is supposed to analyze things that move at Internet speed?

Don't you think there's lots of people that will deny something like that exists? Brush it off as someone who is getting even for not getting promoted. Or deliberate spin.

 

It was probably important to get right in front of this say "there can be no doubt about what this equipment is for and what is capable of" Yes, it has to be dumbed down to what the average Mr and Mrs. America can grasp. How many people like yourself get it so easily?

 

If you try to make the logical extension that the system can then be used to monitor anyone's porn viewing, the answer is, probably yes. But, the logical extension also says that NSA probably doesn't care about your porn use. They need to gather billions of data bits to see if a pattern develops to triangulate a potential threat. Catching porn purveyors is better left to NBC.

ya, they don't care about our freakiness. I don't know what our National Security Advisers tell the Senate Intelligence Community about specific programs, but Dubya told us over and over it was point to point communications.

 

The question most reasonable people would use is what system would you use to carry out proper surveillance, taking into account legal precedent that privacy rights of have often been pushed aside for protection of society. Why can a cop pull you over and charge you with a DUI if you have a busted tail light and did nothing else wrong?

The propensity for violation of privacy or other civil rights is off the hook here.

 

If the NSA said to AT&T, hey we need unlimited access on the following 400,000 names, that we want every 1 and 0 that touches them, with Top Secret security, and we reserve the right to make wholesale and immediate changes to this list as our needs arise..., that would be more acceptable to most reasonable people. What they said was, we want unlimited top secret access to everyone and everything. We shouldn't give the government a blank check to monitor every packet and phone call across the internet backbone, agreed?

[GG]

hey, good response

 

ya, I hear you about getting into all the technical stuff, but there's usually some good overviews that break it down and graphics, attachments, all that. I've been inside data centers like that secret room, they actually lock you in.

 

 

It's the EFF, he can talk about it, they like that. Gets public opinion on their side. Freaking communist liberals, kill em all.

 

 

Don't you think there's lots of people that will deny something like that exists? Brush it off as someone who is getting even for not getting promoted. Or deliberate spin.

 

It was probably important to get right in front of this say "there can be no doubt about what this equipment is for and what is capable of" Yes, it has to be dumbed down to what the average Mr and Mrs. America can grasp. How many people like yourself get it so easily?

 

 

ya, they don't care about our freakiness. I don't know what our National Security Advisers tell the Senate Intelligence Community about specific programs, but Dubya told us over and over it was point to point communications.

 

 

The propensity for violation of privacy or other civil rights is off the hook here.

 

If the NSA said to AT&T, hey we need unlimited access on the following 400,000 names, that we want every 1 and 0 that touches them, with Top Secret security, and we reserve the right to make wholesale and immediate changes to this list as our needs arise..., that would be more acceptable to most reasonable people. What they said was, we want unlimited top secret access to everyone and everything. We shouldn't give the government a blank check to monitor every packet and phone call across the internet backbone, agreed?

 

Your point is premised on the logic that what the NSA does is illegal by nature and then build a case supporting that. Sounds like you know something about these internets tubes. Then perhaps you can explain how in the grand design of the internet, you can selectively pick out a series of packets for inspection and make any sense of them without the ability to filter every packet and continue narrowing the sample sets until you come up with a suspicious list. Is the internet so smart that you would know that a certain packet originated from Bin Laden's computer, and it should be very simple to request that warrant? Or do you think that real time surveillance of terrorist's internet chatter involves new technologies? Why aren't you railing about government installed traffic cameras? How about EZ Pass? Shall I go on?

 

Comparing internet transmissions and requirements for effective surveillance to old fashioned circuit switched telephone traffic is ridiculous, and you know it. But go on your rants and show pictures of wires hanging from the ceiling because it helps your point.

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

Your point is premised on the logic that what the NSA does is illegal by nature and then build a case supporting that. Sounds like you know something about these internets tubes. Then perhaps you can explain how in the grand design of the internet, you can selectively pick out a series of packets for inspection and make any sense of them without the ability to filter every packet and continue narrowing the sample sets until you come up with a suspicious list. Is the internet so smart that you would know that a certain packet originated from Bin Laden's computer, and it should be very simple to request that warrant? Or do you think that real time surveillance of terrorist's internet chatter involves new technologies? Why aren't you railing about government installed traffic cameras? How about EZ Pass? Shall I go on?

 

Comparing internet transmissions and requirements for effective surveillance to old fashioned circuit switched telephone traffic is ridiculous, and you know it. But go on your rants and show pictures of wires hanging from the ceiling because it helps your point.

well, here's the only pic I've ever seen of the cabling entering/exiting the room. It's a secure location, of course there's no inside pics.

 

I said the the chances of breaking innocent people's civil rights and rights to privacy were extremely high and we shouldn't give them a blank check. I don't think they did something illegal per se, in terms of their little splitter project.

 

My impression is that the Cheney, Addington and some others crafted a warrantless wiretapping document and wrote it in the broadest sense possible such that they could do just about anything they wanted in the name of preventing terrorism. They totally skirted the entire checks and balances system, because they bypassed congress and most of the WH staff, including Rice and Powell. Bush signed it into law via a signing statement and they were good to go. So, according to that particular interpretation or bill, they're covered.

 

Did they break laws in crafting that warrantless wiretap bill (is it unconstitutional) or in the process of eavesdropping on suspected AQ yahoos did they deny innocent people their civil liberties? I have no clue and would yield to the EFF and the courts.

 

The key to all this involves a Narus box. Narus is a deep packet inspection (dpi) intercept system that runs at wire speed. It has a rich set of dpi data mining tools in addition to the hardware that let's you actually look at the payload, not just the packet header, and lets you recreate the entire IP session with all the handshaking, routing, etc. It works on data and voice as well. They could supply all kinds of parameters like IP address, VOIP number, SIP URI, keywords, etc. and it will recreate messages, emails, voice calls, file transfers, http traffic, all that. Narus is the baddest intercept solution out there, bar none.

 

I don't profess to know how the NSA obtains or analyzes its data, but they probably pay huge amounts of black money that would give them a range of IP addresses used, or something like that.

 

The internet is not all smart, but if you understand encapsulation, packetization, and some low level TCP/IP routing protocols, you can look at every packet, determine if it meets some criteria, store it if it does, and throw the rest away. That is exactly what how a Narus dpi box works, and of course they've invested in slick data mining tools that makes it much easier on the analysts.

 

I could care less about traffic cameras, or whether I came through a toll both at a certain hour on Friday. I do care whether the NSA can view every single data packet regardless of who sent and received it, or any VOIP or voice call routed over the net at any time. That's too much leeway and it's not necessary. You gotta have some limits and force them to narrow down their warrant list to some reasonable number. Let them have a good discussion about how many people they need to intercept and how they will update it, as opposed to giving them the master keys to the information highway.

 

not a rant, just a general agreement amongst internet people that they went a wee bit too far in the name of fighting global terrorism. Trust me just doesn't cut it in this case.