FBI's instant wiretaps outed by Electronic Frontier Found

pitu

Subject: FBI's instant wiretaps outed by Electronic Frontier Found

here's one not to miss on the holiday weekend...
:shock:
Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF Documents Shed Light on FBI Electronic Surveillance Technology
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005415.php

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/fbis-wiretap-ne.html

FBI's Wiretap Network Revealed And Request for Reader Document Analysis
By Ryan Singel August 28, 2007 | 12:53:20 AM
Categories: Sunshine and Secrecy, Surveillance

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act and provided to Wired News by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

Those are just the first three grafs of today's comprehensive Wired News story about the surprising reach of the FBI's surveillance architecture.

University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze, known in part for figuring out a hack to evade wiretapping systems using a phone feature known as the C-tone, took time in his busy travel schedule to help me understand the documents. He's already got a post up of his own about the heavily redacted documents:

Nonetheless, what remains provides a rare, if fragmented and cryptic, glimpse of the state of FBI electronic surveillance technology in general and CALEA wiretapping in particular.

The DCS documents themselves, which comprise more than a thousand pages, have been published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They came to light only because of the efforts of Marcia Hofmann, who successfully sued the FBI to win their release. More DCS documents will come every month until the FBI releases all of them.

For its part, the FBI kindly responded to my questions about the documents and kept me from making unwarranted assumptions or relying on outdated information.

Cox Communications lawyer Randy Cadenhead was also key to the story. Among the things that didn't make it into the final piece is that Cox is the only major telecom company to publicly publish its forms and fees for wiretaps. That documentation, which doesn't reveal any national secrets, should be on every telecom's website, in interests of transparency. Unfortunately, none of the largest wireless carriers do so, nor they, with the notable exception of AT&T, responded to requests for comments on the story.

Cadenhead also noted that Cox Communications did not participate in, or have any knowledge of, other wiretapping programs that have recently been in the news (read: warrantless wiretapping).

Finally, the documents and the story have plenty left to be explored, and I'm hoping that Wired News and THREAT LEVEL readers will help out. Already one reader, Fat Cobra, points out that the FBI denials of outside penetration of the wiretapping system may have missed the work of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service.

I'll update this post with readers' finds and with posts from others, such as Columbia University professor Steven Bellovin, whose evaluation of the documents made the story possible.

See Also:

* Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates
* Court Gives the FBI a Long Leash in Revealing New Breed of Carnivore
* Reminder: Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day

COMMENTS:

Orin Kerr's post in the Slate exchange (www.slate.com/id/2172952/entry/2172970) addresses the question of filters: "Finding a foreign-to-foreign call or e-mail requires dipping into a stream of traffic and filtering out the calls that are between foreigners... How can the government filter through all that traffic and still make the search 'reasonable' under the Fourth Amendment?" Which all points towards the filter-managers as the weak link in the surveillance chain.

What's interesting about FatCobra's link to the transcript of a 2001 Fox News report on eavesdropping in the US is that the telcos have outsourced call record and billing generation to an Israel-based private company called Amdocs Ltd.

"...sources tell Fox News that in 1999, [the NSA] issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands ? in Israel, in particular."

Later:

"What US government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD."

The origins of the organized crime syndicate in the LA case? Israel.

Read more at www.whatreallyhappened.com/Israeli-Spying-Part-4.htm .

Posted by: Jack Lint | Aug 29, 2007 8:42:14 PM

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