U.S. Government Considers Dealings with Telecommunications Companies as “Intra-Agency”
October 9th, 2009att.gov?
Via: Wired:
The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: the nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.
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The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as “intra-agency” records:
“The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest.”
Directly Related: Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine…And Fighting It by Mark Klein
Klein understands the current and future status of the American Police State. They now have physical control and are rapidly moving toward mind and thought control. The implications are staggering.
Project SHAMROCK, Project MINARET showed the way with all all telegraphic data touching the United States.
The interesting part is the world had hints via Enigma, Crypto AG, the NSA.
The expansion of strange cheap long loop optical telco traffic passing near the USA is also very interesting. Less calls between private non US telcos, cheaper to ‘peer’ the call out to a US carrier and back into another country. So much data now touches the USA and its allied collection points.
The new part is everybody thought the NSA tapped in distant points, a known part, but not talked about.
This news is very strange. Does it open the way to ‘constant’ taps that are legal? Why admit it? Something change with FISA, courts and oversight?
Do US internal fusion centers for state and local police/feds get a free listen too?
Bureaucratic sneak and peek “papers” with a voice and data section? Then a court order after the fishing expedition.
With a paragraph for everyone in law, this will give private prison shareholders hope 🙂
Constant taps have been the norm for several years. The problem the Feds have is the sheer volume of voice and data and finding the time and staff necessary to effectively monitor it all. Agents amuse themselves with listening to various “love nest” communications which have nothing to do with crime or national security.
The Glickster’s comment is spot on.
Which is why the NSA is building not one but multiple massive data-handling facilities, as the monitoring & filtering processes are slowly but steadily “automated” using the very same technologies enabling us to monitor markets, play the twit in real time, download our favorite fetish and/or send the same stupid pet tricks and tired old jokes around the planet over and over again.
I’ll miss the virtual library of Alexandria aspect when the time comes, and the ability to communicate both audibly and visually with distant friends and family, but not much else.
As for ATT.gov, this is just a coming out party. They’ve been a pseudo-government entity since the Bell Labs days, if you consider all the federal funding flowing through the various channels within the larger organization.
Like “freedom” and “transparency”, the illusion was a convenient (if easily de-constructed) one until approximately late 2001.
What with narcs now considered responsible people, while the truly honorable are damned to the fringes (or herded off the reservation entirely) we are witnessing the Panglossian culmination of Fabian counter-revolution, as they confidently unfurl the latest round of colorful high-tech banners designed to both unite and polarize. Tricky, tricky, tricky.
As for the actual future — the version that isn’t televised — I’m mostly holding on to the hope that Baba Yaga’s prognostications about western Europe were wrong. ‘Cause if she was right, Eurasia’s pre-apocalyptic state has only got about seven years left… =)