What is Digg?67 Comments
- digitaldivider, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24It wouldn't suprise me if this was true. Patriot act ***** everything up, as did homeland security.
"Hello America. please hand us all your rights you take for granted and we'll ***** in your faces. Have a nice day." - ksgant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18This isn't a bogus story, there is an EFF lawsuit already filed because of this.
Also, I find it strange that AT&T wanted tiered internet charges to charge places like Google or Yahoo, and it seems to be going through congress with little problems. Also, the government wanted free access to stuff like this and now it's getting it from AT&T. Interesting. I'm not saying that it's a clear case of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". I'm just saying it's interesting. - Daem0nX, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Call me a conspiracy nut if you want but WE need to question our Government and keep THEM in check. Please let me remind you that we the people are supposed to be in charge of the Govt, not the other way around. This country is being ruled by the corrupt and they are all using the biggest tool at their disposal - fear. (We'll keep you safe if you give us your freedoms)
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20bush ***** everything up - everything he touches turns to *****
- VijchtiDoodah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14The NSA is spying on us, Homeland Security is roughing up the citizens...
Perhaps George Orwell's book should be retitled "2006". - icexe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16apotropaic - you are a dumbass, and exactly the kind of brain dead drone oppressors just love to have as citizens. just stop and THINK for a second. you sit idly by while all the mechanisms get put in place to track everything you do, and draconian laws get passed that encourages the authorties to detain you without due cause, simply on suspicion of illegal activity. oh, i don't do anything wrong, so i'm OK, you say. but then a law gets passed that says viewing a thread just like this one is cause for suspicion, then they come knocking on your door to take you away with no warrant or due process.
every tiny personal freedom that gets whittled away adds up my friend, they all add up. Just think back to just ten years ago. Could you surf the net without fear of being monitored? did you have to worry about doing an internet search for the word bomb? could a kid draw a picture of a gun in class without risk of expulsion? could you say out loud you wish the president was dead without looking over your shoulder? - r©ain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Said "Switching Center" is at 666 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA. 94107
How do I know? I live 2 blocks away and have met server techs who have contracted there (Disclosure: I'm a tech -- so I meet others in the trade at bars)
Yes, 666 Folsom... and they display it prominently if you look through the plate glass windows from across the street -- three 666's in a triangle formation showing off the address.
It's ***** pagan* symbology they got going on, numerologically, 3 being a derivative of 6, three 6's = 666. A triangle representative of the pyramid... one could conjecture the same symbolic intent as the pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill with the omnipotent eye.
I ***** you not. And with the threads subject in mind, makes total sense.
Though this is pure coincidence -- I mean, with the address, the illegal collusion for spying on tax paying citizens and the masonic symbolism -- just fun factoids, so don't read too deep.
But it's worth a chuckle and a second of consideration.
*no disrespect, just a perspective for the presumptively mainly judeo-christian audience - icexe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11another day, another one of your rights taken. you didn't need them anyway.
- mooseboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10some choice quotes from the article:
He learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
and
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. AT&T peers with quite a few people to pass traffic. Somehow I have the feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg. - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15The privacy matters don't bother me as much as how much funding they burn up on this kind of stuff. It doesn't catch terrorists or stop terrorist acts. The terrorists aren't stupid enough to use communications that can be intercepted and understood by NSA spooks. A fricken' script kiddie can get around the NSA, you think the "terrorists" can't?
Give back the billions the NSA is burning up on useless tech, and use it for something useful; like education, urban development, medical care, disaster relief, and alternative fuel development.
You shouldn't fear the NSA, they are irrelevant. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Grand Imperial Leader Bush will no be happy with some of his subjects' insolence.
- djpaulie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@apotropaic: you'll never know what rights you've lost until you need them. i don't think you grasp the importance of this.
- barbobot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9too packaged? so now something has to have an extremely complex flow chart to determine if its true or not?
- digitaldivider, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"LOL... I hate people like you... you basically don't know what your talking abuot and echo what you heard on cnn last night by some celebrity who also doesn't know what the hell their talking about.
We still have more rights then any other country in the world. If you are planning to do something stupid, you don't belong in this country anyway. I'm not really planning on doing anything stupid so I don't care if the NSA reads all my emails. the NSA has no interest in 99.9% of people in this country. GET OVER YOURSELF! They don't care about you emailing your girlfriend about what you did last night"
That's the whole point. They might not care about me e-mailing my girlfriend about something stupid, but I DO. they have no right to be sifting through my data being transferred across the web or via telephone or anyone else's for that matter. Patriot Act was a catalyst for this. You might be happy with your voice/data communications being tapped, but I'm sure as ***** not. - majordanger, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Don't act too surprised , the No-Such-Agency has been snooping on everyone for decades.
- 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Don't act surprised? How about this...don't be so smug. The difference here is that what's being done is **against the law**, despite the amazing depth of imagination had by the president, who has somehow mistaken the term "commander-in-chief" for something analagous to "king". He must have been dozing when they discussed the separation of powers in his history class, because he appears to demonstrate neither loyalty to, nor knowledge of this particular aspect of our government.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Wow, it must be really easy for AT&T when they update their throughput to keep the NSA's little "Spy Room" up to date. Maybe they just give the NSA a call and say, "Yo, I'm gonna be adding in about 1000 new fiber lines to Chicago, can you guys get over here and add more capacity into your 'Spy Room', otherwise you won't be able to keep spying on everybody."
- there, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5 This is not same old same old as some of you argue... the Internet is new and this snooping even newer . There is a major difference between spying on the Internet habits of millions of people where you can build massive dossiers of the public (i.e. how they vote, your likes/dislikes, how much use you are to the party, let's see if I can dig up some dirt, etc..)--- versus getting a warrant because of suspicious activity.
. The argument "I have nothing to fear" is ridiculous. Using that argument one might allow for police spot checks of your home at any time. Please explain to me what wrong with the state needing a warrant before having the ability to intrude on your lprivacy? This right is already ingrained in the Bill of Rights isn't it? Don't you believe in the constitution anymore?
As far as I can tell what is happening is hysteria from fear of terrorists is making a great many good people lose their judgment. If the object of terrorism is to generate fear... they are succeeding.
Please. PLEASE.Put aside your pride and come to your senses because this is not just some casual argument that makes no difference to your life. You are most certainly giving up some essential freedoms to the state and once they are gone they will be almost impossible to get back. We need to stop this NOW.
For the record....in many countries income taxes started out as a temporary war measure too. - imdigginthis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5When I was young and gullible they said this was how the communist behaved. I just hope my next door neighbor hasn't taped me when I said; "Thank God, I don't get all the government I'm paying for." I'll be off to the gulag for sure. It does seem like the next logical step in fighting terrorism, recruit your neighbors to spy on you. Do you think the NSA has thought of this yet?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Only if it's orc or undead. Y'know, terrorsts.
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=37.784571~-122.397596&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1203294&sp=adr.666%20Folsom%20St%2c%20San%20Francisco%2c%20CA%2094107
- sanmarcos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5In Argentina, the Secretariat of Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIDE with it's Directorate of Judicial Observations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirección de Observaciones Judiciales (all toghether) does the same thing. They have a contract with phone companies, they pay them a fee for each phone tapped, as long as the Secretariat can provide judicial warrants for the act.
The case is the same in Spain. Obviously, there are many illegal phonetaps, not that anybody keeps track of it. Phone companies are *required* to let the Secretariat re-route phone and internet traffic to their facilities.
See, but in Argentina few people know about that, and nobody is paranoid, they dont even think the Secretariat has such capabilities.
The point here is, that mass-media is creating the paranoia, is it justified? maybe. But when there is control of the mass media, books, tv, radio, everything, information is concealed, people are kept calm. Look at China, you do not see mass hysteria over censoring of search results or the press. They are used to it.
The same case would be if a small outbreak of a contagious, biological, chemical disease/agent was spreading in a US city. The govt would never tell, they would try to contain the information AS LONG AS THEY CAN, to not create mass paranoia and hysteria. - DigeratiPrime, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
- haxx4, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6You surely shouldn't believe all that the government tells you either. This story is an eyeopener.
- fortezza, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I didn't vote for GW Bush and I still got him. So now what do I do?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4ATT: tell you what, we will forward all the data on our backbones to you, you give us the ability to charge websites(google) extra for bandwidth that we are already selling to our users.
- thewise1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The usual suspects in the thread, I see, making the fallacious argument that if you don't have anything to hide, you don't need to worry.
I hope they pay you well to make statements as idiotic as that, because if not, you really have no sense of pride in your mental faculties. - 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Would you like to know why this is so stupid? It's so stupid because it doesn't work. The NSA can fork over 1,000 "potential terrorist threats" to the FBI, and guess how many are actually worth the time spent to investigate them....you got it...NONE. All of this emphasis on data mining (illegal as it is), is having entirely the opposite effect that these government geniuses were touting - instead of providing sound information on real threats, it has resulted in wasting valuable time and resources chasing down everything BUT what they're supposed to be focusing on- or have we already forgotten and/or stopped caring about what that was?
- thewise1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, that took me a long time to realize that the commies my parents told me about existed in this country too -- and worst of all, they came from the very side that calls everyone commies.
- tokyotechy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3baa, not surprised. You get what you vote for.
- TopherT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I seem to remember a similar program that didn't quite get off the ground about a year after the sept. 11 attacks.
- applebyte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Haven't you heard? AT&T and SBC are merging with the NSA to form the new NSAT&TBC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jixu3tpm2io - mooseboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well that would be a good explanation as to all the complaints people have had about Comcast (AT&T broadband) has been oversubscribing their customers.
- skytomorrownow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3yea, but you mention that the secretariat in argentina provides judicial warrants. i think that's what the eff is upset about.
- TheKillDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, another person reads a book and then thinks they know what the goverment does behind closed doors. Like everyone here believes the NSA is listening to EVERY conversation and reading every email. No intellect here... nope... none at all.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is positively silly. Route your traffic over SSL and they're SOL if they try to monitor you. This goes for VOIP traffic as well. Wiretapping is essentially only effective against 'tards who leave themselves open for such spying.
- Wamzlee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I believe that anyone part of an agency, such as the National Security Agency, can qualify as an "agent". The term can be interchangeable with other terms as well.
So you are questioning the merit of something over a stupid, silly little thing. - filovirus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5So since Blizzard contracts with AT&T, does this mean that the NSA knows I just got my level 40 mount?
- Legion303, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Said 'Switching Center' is at 666 Folsom St"
No it isn't.
The only CO on Folsom street is at 611. Nice story, though. - apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I am not afraid of searching for the word bomb see:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bomb
I never have been and never will be. You Icexe are a paranoid freak. If somebody came and took me away for no apparent reason I'd say sorry you got the right guy, but I appreciate you doing everyhting you can to protect this country. I've never known anybody to have been taken away in the middle of the night by this so called the NSA for no reason. Well I've seen a couple on TV that the media seems to LOVE to cover a lot when it happens. But so far its pretty isolated cases.
Why would the kit be drawing a picture of a gun anyway... what a freak kid! - TopherT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The problem isn't that the government knows that you're talking to Suzie about breaking up with John, the problem is that if the government is to slip into some kind of police state, don't look surprised its happened to many countries over the course of history, this system could be used to look for dissidents instead of terrorists.
Maybe they'll just start calling the dissidents terrorists. The use of domestic spy agencies to infiltrate anti war groups during the Vietnam war should clue you in to this possibility. I don't see the wiretapping scandal as particularly important for privacy at the moment but it weakens our country's ability to resist a severe curtailing of our civil liberties, and in this period of growing presidential and federal power this is certainly not something one can easily shrug off. - fortezza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Speaking of homeland security, there is a story on CNN about a homeland security employee who was sending naked pictures of himself to what he thought was a 14 year old girl. Turns out the FBI was on the other side of the chat session, and the dude was suspended.
This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. When people are give the authority to enforce/monitor the law on others, they often make the mistake of thinking they are above the law. Another way of understanding this mentality is the logic "If I am the watcher, then no one is watching me, so I can do whatever I want without fear of being caught."
Homeland security is the same as the KGB. Lets put an end to them as quickly as possible, because soon they will spend all of their time watching U.S. citizens and not the foreign threats they are supposed to be monitoring. - arkanoid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2In almost any country phone tapping can be done only if there exist a good reason. Not to anyone.
- bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The technology today, and in coming years will allow for automatic transcripts of every conversation, with auto search & alerts on keywords or on more complicated "context based" systems such as the one that delivers google ads. It allows for number plates & faces to be automatically recognised and documented to track people. The beginnings of this are already rolling out in britain.
The problem isn't just humans being inherently corrupt, but also beaurocracy being inherently incompetent. This infrastructure is a "law based" or "rule based" infrastructure which means that people in the system will follow the norm - (tell their girlfriend what they did yesterday... talk about the latest in entertainment... consume) or they will be suspect. Of course, like communism, this only applies to the citizens... never the 'leaders'.
In Australia, the red light camera business is a billion dollar industry. The road toll is at an all time high, and this is only the tip of the iceberg with regards to where this technology could go. Not the result of any grand conspiracy, just the blind actions of a few people doing their jobs at the whim of beurocracy. Don't assume its impossible or even improbable that they will be able to monitor every conversation & every bit of travel you do.
They will, and you will regret allowing it. - wardriver20, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"A whistleblower supporting an EFF lawsuit describes how an NSA visit to a key AT&T switching center allegedly led to the creation of a secret wiretap room, where all long distance and internet traffic was siphoned off to the government."
Nothing new. They've been doing this since day 1. - fortezza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That is why we have witnesses, investigations, etc. However, even lies often carry the truth. A wise man once said "Artists use lies to tell the truth, politicians use lies to hide the truth." My point being, there is some element of truth here, so while it may not be full-scale illegal wire-tapping, my money is on that illegal wire-tapping is going on. Lets stop it before it goes from being the exception to being the rule.
- pgm_01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For those who say the technology does not exist to be able to do this:
http://www.google.com/
Billions of pages of information sorted through almost instantaneously.
http://www.tveyes.com/
and their other product
http://www.podscope.com/
which can catalog and sort audio and video feeds and makes them search-able.
You don't think that with the billions of dollars the NSA has to spend that they could have technology better and faster than what is available to the public?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/
That is the ultimate law in the US and NOBODY can break it. The President, Congress, NSA and AT&T all must follow the law of the land. There is no exception that allows for a continuous wiretap of all citizens and congress can not even write such an exception. The only way for this program to be legal is for a constitutional amendment to be created that limits your rights while increasing the power of the government. No amount of hairsplitting over FISA will make a program like this legal. You can have a dragnet of all communications OUTSIDE of the US, but American Citizens are constitutionally protected against such searches. At least they were until this administration decided that they were above the Constitution. - ledmatrix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I notice that unless you support this conspiracy theory you get negative diggs. And why not? We Americans LOVE a good conspiracy. I mean; the intrigue, the mystery, the mystique. Ya just GOTTA love it! So, a report of a conspiracy comes out and we gullible Americans just eat it right up. Forget the fact we have no real, cold hard evidence ourselves. We read it, therefore it MUST be true. It HAS to be true. We WANT it to be true. This may or may not be real, but no one here knows for sure. Most here seem to be rather pertinacious about this particular conspiracy. That’s okay, but I just choose not to just dive head first when I have none of the actual facts or evidence in front of me. We'll have to wait and see.
- fortezza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It may not be new, but it is important to remind people that this is going on, lest the next generation assume the current state of things are they way they should be.
- fortezza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Interesting. I am going to a Jesuit University right now ( computer science major ), and am in one of the mandatory religious studies courses. While I am Muslim now, I was a Southern Baptist. We've studied Christianity and Judaism ( my own religion is coming up next ) , and it is amazing to see how religions absorbed/incorporated the customs and beliefs in order to gain acceptance and influence in their time. Most recently we looked at Christian artifacts from emperor Constantine's time, and Roman mythology was mixed with Christian beliefs in some interesting ways. One example that sticks out in my mind was fresco of Jesus(pbh) riding in Helios's sun chariot. It was acceptable then, but not today, because it is no longer necessary in order to make Christianity relevant. Also interesting is the knowledge of how the Catholic church was formed, the logic behind the papacy, and how the Christian bible ( as opposed to Judaic bible ) went through many revisions in the first 3-4 centuries after the death of Jesus(pbh).
When I was young, I just accepted what I was told and what I read as the absolute truth. But as I got older certain inconsistencies got my attention and caused me ( fortunately ) to question things about 'my' religion. Whether you believe in the tenets of Christianity or not, I believe it is important to question everything, and know where beliefs,traditions, and documents came from instead just blindly believing them. Just recently some very old documents were discovered in Egypt that say Judas was told to betray Jesus(pbh), which is much different than the previous understanding of the event. -
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