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wiretaps
``` [Subsequent to this, a fight has broken out over the 1-in-100 figure, which the FBI claims was a reporting error at the New York Times. The real number, though, is apparently also very high (like 1-in-1000) and equally arbitrary and unrelated to any rationale or historical precedent. Stay tuned. On the other hand, please keep in mind that I do not necessarily endorse the materials I send to RRE. You should always make up your own mind before you act. This is a very serious issue that sets deeper precedents for many other technologies, so I do encourage everyone to become well-informed, help others do the same, and express opinions.]
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 18:31:11 -0800 From: jwarren@well.com (Jim Warren) To: GovAccess@well.com Subject: GovAccess.183.snoops: U.S. KGB; 1 wiretap per 100 calls; $500-mil
The FBI has finally published the details of their half-BILLION-dollar NATIONAL WIRETAP SYSTEM -- a gargantuan threat to the freedom, privacy and civil liberties of every citizen in this nation.
Once deployed, what politician would dare oppose or impeach an unscrupulous administration in control of such convenient, undetectable wiretapping -- that can listen FROM anywhere, TO anywhere, at a keystroke (e.g. Nixon/Watergate)?
Once operational, what federal, state or local elected representative would dare question or oppose law enforcers (e.g., for the decades that J. Edgar Hoover ran massive wiretaps on politicians up to and including sitting Presidents and his own Attorney General, he got almost everything he asked for from Congress -- and from his Presidents -- and that was when wiretapping was hard to do).
Once federal, state and local enforcers have everso-convenient wiretaps -- what Hollywood or television producer will dare create shows critical of law enforcement, much less documentaries of enforcement abuses (e.g., for the decades that J. Edgar Hoover wiretapped everyone from Desi Arnez to Elvis Presley, there were essentially NO shows or movies criticial of the FBI!)
And just think of how entertaining and useful this system will be for every phone phreak, computer cracker, industrial espionage agent and foreign spy -- as each one of them learn how to crack the system, implemented by the nation's notioriously insecure telecommunications companies (if we are to believe the FBI's cracker horror stories and claims of billions of dollars of phone fraud).
And finally, once this system is operational, what government whistle-blower would dare talk to a reporter?
If there was ever a need for outraged, massive howls of opposition to "our" elected federal representatives -- and their replacement at the polls in 1996, if they fail to rescend this Orwellian mandate, much less if they fund it -- the TIME IS NOW!
(Note: It is the Republicans who have been holding up this appropriation -- while FBI Director Louie Freeh has been pleading for it since early this year. Wonder who would support it and who would oppose it, if a Republican was in the White House? :-)
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We Knew It Was Going to be Bad -- But We Didn't Realize How Bad
The FBI is demanding facilities to simultaneously wiretap 1 call in 100 in many urban areas; and a maximum no less than 1 in 400 for the entire nation!
Even if they are following the time-honored bureaucratic practice of requesitioning 3-5 times what they actually want, this is MASSIVE!
According to the FBI's notice to the nation and to our telecommunidations services providers, published in the Federal Register:
"... The capacity figures in this notice reflect the combined number of simultaneous pen register, trap and trace, and communication interceptions that law enforcement may conduct by October 25, 1998. ...
"Category I (the highest category) and Category II (the intermediate category) represent those geographic areas where the majority of electronic surveillance activity occurs. ... Other densely populated areas and some suburban areas, with moderate electronic surveillance activity, are grouped into Category II. ...
"Category III (the lowest category) represents law enforcement's minimum acceptable capacity requirements for electronic surveillance activity. This category covers all other geographic areas. ...
"The actual and maximum capacity requirements are presented as a percentage of the engineered capacity of the equipment, facilities, and services that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications. ..."
URBAN AREA WIRETAP REQUIREMENTS: MAXIMUM OF 1 CALL in 100; 1 in 200, ACTUAL
"Category I
"Actual Capacity - Each telecommunications carrier must provide the ability to meet ... a number of simultaneous ... interceptions equal to 0.5% [1 call in 200] of the engineered capacity of the equipment, facilities, or services that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications. ...
"Maximum Capacity - Each telecommunications carrier must ensure ... communication interceptions equal to 1% [1 call in 100] of the engineered capacity ..."
URBAN & SUBURBAN AREAS: 1 in 200 CALLS WIRETAPPED, MAXIMUM; 1 in 400, ACTUAL
"Category II ... Actual Capacity ... communication interceptions equal to 0.25% [1 call in 400] of the engineered capacity ...
"Maximum Capacity ... 0.5% of the engineered capacity of the equipment, facilities, or services that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications.
MINIMUM FOR THE NATION: CAPABILITY TO SIMULTANEOUSLY WIRETAP 1 CALL in 400
"Category III ... Actual Capacity ... interceptions equal to 0.05% ...
"Maximum Capacity ... number of simultaneous ... interceptions equal to 0.25% [1 call in 400] ...
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Up-to-Date Eaddrs for Congress Members & Congressional Committees
Though the prodigious efforts of librarian Grace York (graceyor@umich.edu), there is a comprehensive list of congressional email addresses available on the University of Michigan Library Gopher. Gopher to the University of Michigan Library Gopher or telnet to una.hh.lib.umich.edu Login as gopher. Path: Social Sciences/Government/U.S. Government: Legislative Branch/E-Mail Addresses.
Access is also provided through the Documents Center's web site: http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/federal.html and the ULIBRARY Gopher's web interface: gopher://una.hh.lib. umich.edu:70/00/socsci/poliscilaw/uslegi/conemail
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Clinton Admin & FBI Imply This Will Be Used Only Under Court Order - NOT SO!
All of the law-n-order hype about this to congress-critters and the press has implied that it would only be used under court order.
BULL SHIT!
Let's ignore the fact that it will be abused by those in power who make unauthorized used of their authorized access to the system -- if history is any implication.
The actual language of the 1994 authorizing legislation (titled, in true Orwellian double-speak, the "Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act," the CALEA) requires that:
"[Every] telecommunications carrier shall ensure that its equipment, facilities, or services that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications are capable of -- "(1) expeditiously isolating and enabling the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, to intercept, to the exclusion of any other communications, all wire and electronic communications carried by the carrier within a service area to or from equipment, facilities, or services of a subscriber of such carrier concurrently with their transmission to or from the subscriber's equipment, facility, or service, or at such later time as may be acceptable to the government; ..." [there's lots more!]
Notice the part: "pursuant to a court order OR OTHER LAWFUL AUTHORIZATION."
Which, "other lawful authorizations?"
Us peons -- who Shall Be Subservient to Big Brother -- don't know. Probably most members of Congress who so casually demanded that the nation's telecomm carriers inflict this on us, and authorized half a billion dollars to pay for it, don't know.
Some "lawful authorizations" to wiretap are certainly classified -- and, of course, we victims can't be told about those secret authorizations. After all, then they wouldn't be secret.
And I won't even get into what authorizations the President may have under all of the secret war powers that Congress has given to him over the decades, that have never rescinded. (Note that various Presidents have formally declared numerous wars -- "War on Drugs," "War on Poverty," "War on Crime," etc. -- and those declarations have never been withdrawn.)
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FBI Says This Is Just to Keep Level Playing Field - But It's MASSIVE Change!
The FBI first attempted to weasel this into law in 1991, hidden in the post-Gulf-War Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Bill. It took them until 1994 to finally ram it through Congress, fast-tracked with no substantive hearings, no roll-call vote in the [Democrat-controlled] House, and unanimous consent vote in the [Democrat-controlled] Senate -- literally only hours before it adjourned so incumbants could rush home to campaign for re-election. It was quickly, and every-so-quietly, signed into law by ex-antiwar-activist Clinton ... who shoulda known better. (Wonder what the FBI has on Clinton in their files?)
Throughout this, the FBI (as front-man for the numerous federal, state and local government snoop-n-peep agencies) whined that they needed this half-gigabuck any-place, any-time wiretap system, "just to keep the wiretap capabilities that law enforcement had 'always' had" (i.e., since the early 1900s).
BULL SHIT!
Government has never before had the ability to wiretap with so little effort.
Government has never before had the capability to wiretap FROM anyplace.
Government has never before had the capability to wiretap AT A KEYSTROKE.
For the most part, Government has never before the ability to tap UNDETECTABLY.
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Local and State Incumbents & Enforcers Can Play Peeping Tom, Too
The statute includes this definition:
"The term "government" means the government of the United States and any agency or instrumentality thereof, the District of Columbia, any commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States, and any State or political subdivision thereof authorized by law to conduct electronic surveillance."
Note that this means it allows ALL federal, state, county, city and other "authorized" agents and agencies to use this pervasive peeping tool.
And just think about how much fun they will have on slow nights in the office, once we have widespread use of videophones.
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Watergate, Joe McCarthy, HUAC, Cointelpro, FBI Library "Awareness" Program, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Dirty Tricks, Lyndon Johnson
If this system were installed in the 1950s, imagine what the red-baiting Joe McCarthy (and Senatorial side-kick Richard Nixon) could have done through a friendly law enforcer?
Remember how many lives and careers were demolished by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)?
Or the joy of the FBI's dirty-tricks program that successfully demolished various law-abiding anti-war organizations.
Then there was the FBI's massive requests that librarians covertly monitor all materials being checked-out by various library patrons, and report it to agents.
And good ol' Lyndon Johnson didn't hesitate to sic the IRS on his political opponents.
And FBI Director Hoover ... hell, he used his FBI facilities -- that will now control the National Wiretap System -- to compile so much dirt on his political opponents that no would question him or his practices or budget demands, and President JFK and Attorney General Bobby K dared not remove him, even though they were just short of open warefare with him.
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Wiretap Action Alert from Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Date: 2 Nov 1995 11:21:11 -0500
From: "Marc Rotenberg"
[Please repost]
The New York Times reports today that the FBI has proposed "a national wiretapping system of unprecedented size and scope that would give law enforcement officials the capacity to monitor simultaneously as many as one out of every 100 phone lines" in some regions of the country. ("FBI Wants to Vastly Increase Wiretapping," NYT, Nov. 2, 1995, at A1)
The story follows the October publication in the Federal Register of the FBI plans to implement the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, the controversial "digital telephony" bill that was opposed by many groups last year but supported by an industry association called the "Digital Privacy and Security Working Group" after the government put up $500,000,000 to pay for the new surveillance features. (See EPIC Alert 2.12)
The Times article also notes that there is now some question about whether the law will ever go into effect. A provision to provide funding was deleted last week after "several freshman Republicans, including Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, a former federal prosecutor, said he objected to the way the money for wiretapping would be raised and that he had concerns about how the FBI might use such a sweeping surveillance ability."
The article also says that "The scope of the FBI plan has startled industry telephone executives, who said it was difficult to estimate how much it would ultimately cost to carry out the capacity increases."
EPIC is urging the on-line community to object to implementation of the wiretap plan. More information can be found at our web page:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/.
Marc Rotenberg rotenberg@epic.org
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Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) Offers Comprehensive Wiretap Analysis
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 14:11:30 -0500 To: policy-posts@cdt.org From: editor@cdt.org (editor@cdt.org) Subject: CDT Policy Post No.26 -- FBI DigTel Surveillance Capacity Request
Under this header, Washington's CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY circulated an outstanding, 34-kilobyte analysis and detail of the FBI's plan. Unfortunately, it said, "This document may be re-distributed freely provided it remains in its entirety." Since I was loathe to inflict their 34KB plus the other items herein on unsuspecting GovAccess recipients, I will only provide these pointers to where to get this excellent CDT analysis, and the FBI's Federal Register notice that it references and includes:
[Federal Register: October 16, 1995 (Volume 60, Number 199)] [Notices] [Page 53643-53646] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE CDT POLICY POST LIST
To subscibe to the policy post distribution list, send mail to "Majordomo@cdt.org" with:
subscribe policy-posts
in the body of the message (leave the subject line blank)
The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. The Center's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that advance constitutional civil liberties and democratic values in new computer and communications technologies.
General information: info@cdt.org World Wide Web: URL:http://www.cdt.org FTP URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/
Snail Mail: The Center for Democracy and Technology 1001 G Street NW Suite 500 East Washington, DC 20001 (v) +1.202.637.9800 * (f) +1.202.637.0968
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Is Someone Already Watching All International Net Traffic?
The following is the transcript of an actual communications trace that a friend ran, while I was sitting next to him, watching -- reprinted here with his permission.
He did a "traceroute" of two messages that he sent from his machine in Switzerland (he'd telneted into it while we were at a computer conference in California).
Traceroute automatically reports each Internet node through which a message passes, as it proceeds from origin to destination.
He did two traceroutes. The first was from Switzerland to an addressee at Netcom in San Jose, California. The second was from Switzerland to an addressee in Israel.
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 02:54:58 +0200 From: kelvin@fourmilab.ch (John Walker) To: jwarren@well.com Subject: Traceroute
> /usr2/kelvin> traceroute netcom11.netcom.com traceroute to netcom11.netcom.com (192.100.81.121), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 eunet-router (193.8.230.64) 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 2 146.228.231.1 (146.228.231.1) 326 ms 345 ms 307 ms 3 Bern5.CH.EU.NET (146.228.14.5) 447 ms 408 ms 364 ms 4 146.228.107.1 (146.228.107.1) 127 ms 37 ms 36 ms 5 Zuerich1.CH.EU.NET (146.228.10.80) 37 ms 38 ms 175 ms 6 (134.222.9.1) 65 ms 109 ms 252 ms 7 lp (134.222.35.2) 196 ms 179 ms 405 ms 8 Vienna1.VA.ALTER.NET (137.39.11.1) 191 ms 179 ms 313 ms 9 fddi.mae-east.netcom.net (192.41.177.210) 336 ms 204 ms 303 ms 10 t3-2.dc-gw4-2.netcom.net (163.179.220.181) 182 ms 251 ms 187 ms 11 t3-2.chw-il-gw1.netcom.net (163.179.220.186) 305 ms 586 ms 518 ms 12 t3-2.scl-gw1.netcom.net (163.179.220.190) 537 ms 693 ms 797 ms 13 t3-1.netcomgw.netcom.net (163.179.220.193) 698 ms 549 ms 754 ms 14 netcom11.netcom.com (192.100.81.121) 890 ms 1922 ms 1696 ms
> /usr2/kelvin> traceroute jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il traceroute to jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il (192.114.21.101), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 eunet-router (193.8.230.64) 2 ms 3 ms 2 ms 2 146.228.231.1 (146.228.231.1) 933 ms 853 ms 874 ms 3 Bern5.CH.EU.NET (146.228.14.5) 1040 ms 450 ms 525 ms 4 146.228.107.1 (146.228.107.1) 453 ms 424 ms 188 ms 5 Zuerich1.CH.EU.NET (146.228.10.80) 64 ms 61 ms 47 ms 6 (134.222.9.1) 80 ms 312 ms 84 ms 7 lp (134.222.35.2) 270 ms 400 ms 216 ms 8 Vienna2.VA.ALTER.NET (137.39.11.2) 660 ms 1509 ms 886 ms 9 dataserv-gw.ALTER.NET (137.39.155.38) 1829 ms 1094 ms 1306 ms 10 orion.datasrv.co.il (192.114.20.22) 1756 ms 1280 ms 1309 ms 11 ...
Notice that both messages went through an unnamed site -- 134.222.9.1 and then a strangely-named site, "lp (134.222.35.2)" -- then through the same Vienna, Virginia (USA) site ... and thereafter, on to their destination. I.e., the second message went through Virginia to get from Switzerland to Israel.
The whois servers at the InterNIC and at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information report, ``No match for "134.222.9.1". '' and `` No match for "134.222.35.2".''
Now let me see ... which spy agencies are located in or near Virginia?
--jim
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[This is where I normally insert quotes or humor. This is not a quote.]
While on a September lecture trip to Washington, I was invited to dinner with an "associate" Secretary of Defense [title purposely disguised] who's responsibilities include surveillance and security technology, including cryptography and the National Security Agency.
GovAccess readers will be happy to know that the administration's "Clipper II" key-escrow proposal has little chance of being adopted, and also -- without exception, the NSA does not spy on nor evesdrop on U.S. citizens, foreign or domestically. I was assured of this. --jim warren ```
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