...and your emails and internet traffic. Anything that passes between cities.
Let's take a step back and look at what was reported this morning -- some vendor who was approached by General Hayden with specifications for a very large database project used to track ???
The NSA is recording your ACTUAL phone call content, your email traffic and your internet traffic wherever they have deployed Narus hardware and software. Not call records, but the calls themselves. Not the IP addresses of your emails and web site accesses, but the content that you viewed or originated. It's all there. It isn't science fiction. And it isn't limited to "personal" data. All business data is exposed. It's called "perfect information", the ability to know about the news before it is news. That's how you keep from ever being surprised again.
Read on...
Americablog was the first to say BS. Rob spelled it out to John
http://americablog.blogspot.com/... indicating in simple terms that the description of the world's largest database hardly fits something that would track only call data. I couldn't agree more. To be specific, call data is: to/from numbers and call durations. Frankly it is a pithy amount of data. Even 10 years of all the call data on Earth wouldn't comprise what could be described as the world's largest database. I design these databases for a living. That isn't what was specified to the vendor who spilled the beans. It was misinterpreted and is now ALL over the press. The government is probably happy that the specifications were not fully disclosed in USA Today because then it would be obvious that they have the ability to store not only to/from and duration, but the calls themselves, as well as emails, your web traffic and anything else that passes through major communication centers, including THIS post and everything that passed to www.dailykos.com from outside the local calling area it is located in. Most email/blog providers are located outside your local calling area. Sorry!
About the technology from the vendor itself:
http://www.narus.com/...
"Key Features
Active, Passive and Hybrid Access Function models
Vendor service and network agnostic
Passive model collects off-the-line at wire speeds
Internet, VoIP, PTT, e-mail, etc. all in one platform
Wireline to wireless, dialup to broadband
Secure and scalable administration and mediation functions"
Let me translate:
Active - can watch or listen AS IT HAPPENS on select channels, including the ability to block or alter content in flight
Passive - streaming of all content, in high volume to a storage device for later cataloging
Hybrid - both simultaneously
Agnostic - it will plug into any network provider's equipment at the card level, just like the USB port on your computer. Only hitch is that the device has to be ATTACHED to the cards in the router. This means it has to go ON-SITE. This is where "cooperation" comes in.
Off-the-line at wire speeds - the firehose, all traffic written to storage for later playback, cataloging, analysis
All in one platform - it can analyze ALL forms of traffic. For example, when you download a web page it arrives in pieces. This software can pick out a receiving destination, like your PC, and reassemble the web pages you are downloading on a monitoring workstation while you are receiving them
Wireless to wireless, dialup to broadband - this is because the point it connects to on the network carries all this traffic in a single format, making it possible to collect any or all of it via one means
Secure - they can drop it into telco offices, administer it remotely and pick out just what they want to monitor, from just voice stuff, to an entire communications backbone
Scalable - by adding components they could literally monitor all fiber optic communications into/out of NY City.. The mediation functions mean they provide the software to do the same realtime translations on the back side, i.e. they can reconstruct digital voice calls (which ALL conversations become on the backbone), your internet traffic and your email communications prior to storing and cataloging them. A complete digital record. Big brother. Oceania. 1984, just 22 years late. Not bad for government work.
There's a lot more detail on this page: http://www.narus.com/...
but if my original post made your head swim I can summarize it by saying they can take all the traffic they collected for you and wrap it up in a tidy bow. The NSA can then store it indexed by from/to phone number, from/to IP address. They can replay the majority of your activities anytime they want. And it is never deleted. It doesn't make any sense to delete it.
So why do they go to some data storage company with specifications for a really big database? Because if you had all this data to catalog, which you can now collect at will through your OWN points of presence (that's phone company lingo for the place where the fiber optic cable ends are) at your own network provider (Global Crossing), or at those AT&T, Verizon and Sprint office that have permitted you to install your gear, where would you PUT all the data you are cataloging?
Well in a really big database, or a federation of locally stored, really big databases. Didn't Mitchell Wade of MZM fame have a contract to deliver a data storage device? Wasn't it funded out the Executive Branch slush fund? See what giving specs to vendors who aren't crooks gets you? The front page of USA Today. Too bad. He wouldn't have a clue how to design something that can store a gigabyte a second on a continuous flow basis. That is a fine art.
So back to Global Crossing for a minute. Ever seen a board like this one in the private sector? http://www.globalcrossing.com/...
General Cromer has worked in organizations with massive data acquisition and storage requirements.
http://www.af.mil/...
I struggled with Admiral Clemens
http://resolution.extendedsystems.com/...
until I remembered that originally Hayden thought about fiber optic communications cable via undersea taps (largely impossible).
http://news.zdnet.com/...
The real interesting one however is Pete Aldridge.
http://www.globalcrossing.com/...
You won't find a telecom company with a board of directors ANYTHING like the one assembled here. This is the data acquisition, storage and analysis executive dream team, running its own network, selling bandwidth to the world.
It solves all of Hayden's problems caused by the phone companies migrating from satellites and terrestrial microwaves to fiber optics. Without access points to fiber, the NSA is powerless. Only problem is these access points give TOO MUCH power. That is their argument. They have to have these tools. Downside is that the sheer volume of data available to them means they have to store it to review it.
Sad part is this entire scheme is vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. A terrorist could simple make a mockery of the entire system through the digital equivalent of the IEDs they are using in Iraq. This might be why the geniuses spending shitloads of our tax dollars on this stuff don't want the word to get out. Not only will we ALL be totally pissed, but you can render it largely worthless and never leave your arm chair.
And this sure beats the hell out of a bungled bugging attempt at a campaign headquarters. Who was that Nixon guy anyway? All he had to do was keep repeating "It's all legal. It's all legal. It's all legal." Silly wabbit.