US Spies Have "Security Agreements" With Foreign Telecoms 181
McGruber writes "The Washington Post is reporting the existence of 'Team Telecom', lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, who ensure that Global Crossing and other foreign-owned telecoms, quickly and confidentially fulfill the USA's surveillance requests. Team Telecom leverages the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve cable licenses. The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a 'Network Operations Center' on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company's executives and directors. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment for the Washington Post's article."
To summarize (Score:5, Insightful)
We are shocked. SHOCKED! That the US Government is SPYING on citizens and foreign governments with the assistance of telecoms and leading Internet companies.
US Congressmen are shocked. SHOCKED!
European officials are shocked. SHOCKED!
Slashdot, reddit and cool kids sites are shocked. SHOCKED!
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and not so cool not-kids are shocked. SHOCKED!
Newspapers and universities are shocked. SHOCKED!
My God what's next... that US businesses might be selling their customer's buying and usage histories to other businesses?
Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a huge danger in the "we already knew they did this" thinking you see posted everywhere.
We already had suspicions, and very well founded ones considering AT&T's NSA room, but the information we are getting is different. It has confirmed beyond any doubt those suspicions are true and those who believed them not foil hatters. Why is this important? Because if we do nothing in the face of absolute confirmation, it means that the DC pukes will know they have mandate to do all this and more.
So quit being complacent "I told you so" time wasters, and get down to working for change. This is quite seriously, a "now or never" moment.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the "they already knew this" folks would have called you paranoid if you asserted half of what's been revealed. It's a thin attempt to justify their complacent attitudes, in the face of evidence that radical attitudes were called for all along.
And hopefully, I'm not going to be called paranoid now when I assert that the government has a social media strategy, and that they know how to play on people's vanities in order to manufacture consent.
Does Zuckerberg really know? (Score:5, Insightful)
This casts a new light on Facebook, Google and Microsoft executives' denials of the NSA having "direct access" to their servers. Maybe the executives are not cleared to know what their tech staffs are doing, and the tech staffs are gagged from telling them. This won't kill the Cloud for users (many value convenience over privacy) but for anyone with confidential information, or entrusted with the private information of others - they don't know who they can really trust and what their liability will be.
People don't enjoy feeling duped. It's psychologically easier to believe that you knew this all along and you are not surprised.
Re:Confirmed information is useless (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you going to do about it?
Cry. In my beer. We are fucked. Might as well find a way to relax and enjoy those deep, rhythmic thrusts. Its military industrial complex on steroids. As long as there is big money involved, and all 3 branches of govt are complicit, and the govt is run by big money, there is no hope. The chance of a sea change in the US electorate that gives a shit and might effect some meaningful change, is slim to none.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the Seattle restorethe4th rally was scheduled for July 6 at noon at Westlake Center/Park. It was about 80 degrees yesterday, and not a cloud in the sky.
I showed up after driving for an hour and half, walked around in circles looking for the protest. I saw three cop cars, three ambulances, a dozen cops, and a Jesus Freak with a sign asking "what does Jesus mean to you".
I didn't break out my sign -- I figured it would be bad PR to have a protest only as big as Jesus Freaks could muster, because that makes the issue easily dismissed, ignored, and made fun of.
Posting web pages and not doing anything ... is not fucking doing anything. It is unbelievable to me that Anonymous can organize large protests against the CoS, a group that harms a tiny fraction of the world's population, but Seattle can't get 10 people to show up to protest an issue that threatens almost every person on the planet. That's fucking appalling.
Re:Confirmed information is useless (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you going to do about it?
Vote for libertarians
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
As just one thing, vow that you will not vote for any candidate who does not support a full and complete pardon for Snowden. Even if you think your candidate is a "lesser evil" -- all that has gotten us is whole bunch of evil. Make the politicians fear for their jobs.
Send donations to charities that do good work in nations that will harbor Snowden. Yesterday I emailed public contact addresses at the embassies for Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Boliva requesting suggestions. I hope I get some, but if that doesn't work, there's always google.
It is important to talk about the issues and protest them, but it is even more important to take concrete steps in support of those issues.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As if (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
As just one thing, vow that you will not vote for any candidate who does not support a full and complete pardon for Snowden. Even if you think your candidate is a "lesser evil" -- all that has gotten us is whole bunch of evil. Make the politicians fear for their jobs.
And you shouldn't be afraid of voting a third-party candidate. Candidates in the Republican/Democrat parties do respond to those third-parties, if the race between the is close, as they want to get as many votes as they can.
Re: You're a fagot (Score:2, Insightful)
As one who totally agrees with you on the evils of "trivializing" the recent revelations of government abuses, I also recognize how much of a fuckhead you are for calling anyone who would challenge your tiny mind a "faggot". Maybe he wasn't "trivializing" these reports at all, but instead pointing out how much this should not be a shocking revelation at all. It should not be, because we were warned by whistleblowers over the past decade how our government has been using our communications systems in violation of our rights as citizens. Up until now those who spoke out were dismissed as paranoid "conspiracy theorists", as was anyone who so much as mentioned Orwell's "1984". If you feel that your government has taken you like some kind of "faggot", then I would not hold back the outrage, but I just can't pretend that they already have inexorably taken us all on account of the. majority dumbasses who gave them the invitation for all of us!
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity.
Even if that were true -- and there have been way too many dubious cases now to believe that without qualification -- it would only apply today. A lot of the danger in these systems is not how they are used right now, it is how they might be used by someone we haven't even identified yet who's running the show in 5 or 10 or 50 years.
If you think that it could never happen, may I remind you that just months ago, shortly after the Boston bombing, several prominent US politicians including a man who ran for President stated publicly and unambiguously that the surviving suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant and thus excluded from the normal rules of due process. Given that he was suspected of murder, a crime that can still carry the death penalty in the US but normally does not in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that's a particularly disturbing footnote to an already tragic event.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, cool. So instead of building a huge expensive Orwellian surveillance apparatus to catch criminals that actually exist and have an impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, the whole thing is aimed at the imaginary boogeyman that kills fewer people per year than lightning.
That makes it so much better. It's not a benevolent dictatorship trying to make a utopia, it's a fascist police state trying to keep itself in power. Thanks for clearing that up for us.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yep (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't that just as disturbing?
It means they have the tools already to crush us completely and we will never rid ourselves of the totalitarian state. We may not even know when it happens. Fictitious reports of crime can make us feel like we are unsafe and ensure we all stay quiet when really *bad* shit happens. And the rest can be kept quiet through the totalitarian state and system (systems which have shown to be in place already).