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Does The CIA Pay AT&T $10 Million A Year To "Surrender" Phone Logs?
In a mirror image of the NSA's wanton invasion of privacy - whether 'enabled' by privacy policy 'small print' or not - NYTimes Charlie Savage claims that the CIA pays the US' 2nd largest telecom company, AT&T, $10 million a year in exchange for voluntarily handing over troves of phone logs. This has been going on since at least 2010 and while the CIA is forbidden from "acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of US persons," AT&T has indeed been handing over information pertaining to American citizens.
Citing federal officials with knowledge of the program, The Times’ Charlie Savage wrote that telecommunication giant AT&T has been routinely collaborating in CIA investigations by surrendering phone records to the agency and even scouring vast archives of dated logs on their behalf since at least 2010, adding yet another scandalous chapter in the sordid story of the telecom’s long-lasting and often elusive relationship with the government.
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done through a voluntary contract in which AT&T is awarded millions of dollars annually in exchange for searching its databases for the CIA in instances where the agency provides the phone number of an overseas terrorism suspect whose contacts are then called into question.
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Representatives for both the CIA and AT&T declined to confirm the existence of the program to the Times, with the intelligence agency acknowledging that it is forbidden from “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of US persons.” According to Savage, however, AT&T has indeed handed over information pertaining to American citizens, the likes of which are supposedly subject to privacy safeguards — that could then be bypassed by other US agencies.
“Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, but when the company produces records of international calls with one end in the United States, it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and ‘masks’ several digits of their phone numbers,” Savage said officials told him.
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Speaking on behalf of the CIA, spokesman Dean Boyd told the Times that the agency “protects the nation and upholds privacy rights of Americans by ensuring that its intelligence collection activities are focused on acquiring foreign intelligence and counterintelligence in accordance with US laws.”
“We value our customers’ privacy and work hard to protect it by ensuring compliance with the law in all respects. We do not comment on questions concerning national security,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel added.
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A caveat says that AT&T will indeed share personal information, however, to “Comply with court orders, subpoenas, lawful discovery requests and other legal or regulatory requirements, and to enforce our legal rights or defend against legal claims.” Another says information could be shared with “a responsible governmental entity in emergency or exigent circumstances or in situations involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury.”
According to Savage’s sources, however, no court order is necessary for the sort of specific collaboration cited in the Times, and the exchange of millions of dollars annually suggests that the relationship is one that involves legitimate business transactions — with one party being the intelligence arm of the United States.
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Elsewhere in their Privacy Policy, AT&T acknowledges, “We share your Personal Information with companies that perform services for us” and adds “we cannot guarantee that your Personal Information will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this Policy.”
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What's it called when private enterprise gets in bed with the government?
Fascism.
"An inherent aspect of fascist economies was economic dirigisme,[4] meaning an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence, and effectively controls production and allocation of resources. In general, apart from the nationalizations of some industries, fascist economies were based on private property and private initiative, but these were contingent upon service to the state.[5]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism
Healthcare Industry
Auto Industry
Financial System (every major bank)
Google
Apple
Verizon
Yahoo
AT&T
....feel free to add, I'm lazy.
What's it called when private enterprise gets in bed with the government?
An illicit affair?
They are not really intellectuals at the CIA, it's more a kin to a cult of personalities than anything designed to help the middle class.
Amazon and IBM
Microsoft, FB, WMT, etc., etc..
Gov'mt has claerly become the playground of busybodies and control freaks.What ever happened to "none of your damn business!!"?
Unfortuntely the consequence of letting them have free reign is that they've shut down the country.
You'd think some hackers would be able to make these clowns' computers eat the code equivalent of broken glass.
Good hackers end up working for the gvt or staying in jail, thus reducing the #'s and quality of the young eager hackers. So no, there is no one left to do that task.
"
"....feel free to add, I'm lazy."
yeah, we already knew that
Quite apart from this government trampling over the rights and liberties of it's own citizens , is the fucking gall they have by using taxpayers money to do so. Maybe it's time for a tax revolt.
Worlds largest class action lawsuit.
I agree shareholders should be pissed. 10 million isn't much money.
Uncle Sam wants your STOOL SAMPLE............
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2487837/Sensors-sewage-tu...
insanity
good link
cant believe someone would even bother designing this, and or deploy this boondoggle on the off chance someone was making a bomb
how many bombers are there? seriously....
this is money for development that could have been spent on something useful...anything at all
It's so insulting. Gawwwd!!
Taxpayers paying to have a private corporation assist the Government in violating their Constitutional right to privacy?
Seems par for the course in the Fascist Kleptoligarchy once known as the U.S.A.
You'd think by now some grandstanding member of the house of representatives would drop the T-word bomb (hint: treason) with respect to this shit. We've now had multiple incontrovertible disclosures of outright illegal activity by the NSA/CIA.
Seriously, I want my token criminal charges against a senior apparatchik now, before it goes back to business as usual.
Even Al Gore is on board with this one: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/07-3
I am likely wrong as I do not understand all of the security features of smart phones, but, is there a chance that the ongoing trashing of Blackberry has something to do with the lack of goomint backdoors to the BB10 OS?
Everyone hates them in the offiical media, and has from before their release, yet it is a pretty good piece of tech.
I bought one because of the mass market ignored features of the phone.
The attacks on the Z10 came before the thing was released and escalated to the CNBS din of hate when RIM needed developers after release.
Perhaps I am wrong about the security of communication on the BBRY phones. I just have not yet seen that BBRY is as comprimized as every other NSA extention phone. (even the vaunted open source are courtesy of CIA).
The BBRY can be had for three days of the FED effluence. That would remove the only secure communication available to lowlife "citizens".
"but, is there a chance that the ongoing trashing of Blackberry has something to do with the lack of goomint backdoors to the BB10 OS?"
You think?!! I've actaully just assumed that. They need to be selling to the BRICS nations who are fed up with the juvenile machinations of the US.
My take also. See Quest, Joe Nacchio.
Long AT&T?
Prostitution can take place at many levels.
“we cannot guarantee that your Personal Information will never be disclosed in a manner inconsistent with this Policy.”
"yeah, well fuck you too"
i find it funny that they don't put people's phone numbers in the phone books anymore. looks like someone is finally paying attention. http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975AMMAN03361_b.html
AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! are birds of the same feather.
Did I miss any?
I don't think so, but if any come to mind, I'll send you a tweet.
T still owns the central office switching, so they have all the long distance records. A small distinction in todays world, but it does make it easier for the NSA, CIA, &businesses that want to track their usage from end to end.
Thus brings up interesting corporate disclosure liability questions, if a huge portion of "earnings" are illegal unconstitutional privacy disclosures that can go away with a court ruling, is the company obligated to disclose that threat?
"Sorry folks, some American judge just ruled all sales of customers private communications to the CIA /NSA/KGB/Stasi/ Red Army were illegal, and our ad-revenue sales were actually 70% lower"
And in the disclosures from Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc illegal privacy sales of personal communications disclosed as "ad -revenue" could be construed as outright fraud.
Saw an article discussing exactly this issue.
Google's Schmidt's recent article in the WSJ slamming the NSA was a blatant and faux 'we're not fascists' plea to the people who are quietly adopting Firefox, Duck Duck Go, Ghostery, and other techniques to opt out of Google's information gathering abilities and thus bring a hammer down on their ability to print money.
While earnings are likely not an issue at this point, is this starting to hit on the margin?
Time will tell.
Adopting Firefox?? Ummm, its more like, who actually uses that POS browser Google is hyping all the time, Chrome..
xx5-x23-4xxx 8:32
5xx-12x-4xx7 9:50
55x-12x-xx67 12:30
xx5-xx3-x567 13:11
"Does the CIA pay AT&T to surrender phone logs?"---Yes. That one was awfully easy; what's the next question?
Every electronic device sold and licensed by the FCC meets this criteria, which is often printed right on the label:
" This device may not cause harmful interference. This device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation. "
Translation: " Don't fuck with us, but expect to get fucked at any given moment ".
Telecoms follow pretty much the same protocol.
That's EMI, unrelated to anything discussed here
Everything, all the time. If you communicate it in any way other than whispering it in somebody's ear, they own it. End of story.
fuckers.
"we are just selling lists for a dollar per data point just like we would any other paying customer", says att, "the cia pays extra for more specific data.this is the free market at work."
If ATT is only getting $10 mil to sell out the public, the CIA has a lot of dirt on them.
And how much does AT&T pay the CIA for their data?
Quid pro quo?
AT&T hear this: I will be cancelling service as soon as my contract is up.
NSA - hear my phone calls. You will just make the haystack bigger.
What's shocking is that they're only charging $10M/year. It's amazing how cheaply we're being pimped out.
"Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls"
That's a problem. AT&T is a US phone company, how are they accessing foreigners' telephone calls between 2 foreigners? Unless they are targeting foreigners with international cell phones who are roaming on their network and making international calls (i.e. business travelers)... which coupled with the TSA, makes the US a really unattractive police state to visit.
re: "how are they accessing foreigners' telephone calls between 2 foreigners?"
I'll wager you that someone in Israel knows the answer to that question.
see: http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/25/the-nsa-s-intern-i...
guess what, it's not just for the French...
The government is being more criminal than AT&T in this case. The government holds all the cards.
Who knows how dirty it gets? We could be talking full blown cleveland steamers or some good old fashioned pegging. Sure we would love it to be just some good ol' reach arounds with "phone logs" and "10 million"...but ya I don't think so.
If they are paying AT&T, they are paying all the other carriers, too. It would be anticompetitive to favor a sigle carrier, no? And I bet it involves not just voice, but data as well and all the ISPs. I feel safer already knowing how vigilantly my government is protecting me.
I can protect myself also. I keep sensitive data on external media (SSD, HDD, optical and flash drives) and only connect them to my PC when not connected to any network. I also use an unbreakable, mutating-key algorithm encryption like Cryptogra.ph for all my private data and communications. Good luck with that, NSA!
I love it....the "we can´t do this legally..but hey...can you pay us 10 million for it"..is that a paper trail or what...
Or what..
I just found out that I have a Google+ account...apparently Google thought I needed one and set it up for me...fuckers.
Time to go back to the Two Cans and a String method of communication, or maybe passing hand written notes.
Twenty, 24 hours from a phone tap
Sort of interesting that T receives money for this. I'd tend to think CIA would not have to pay for these things... Makes me wonder how much GOOG, FB, MSFT etc are receiving.