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USA Today: U.S. Government Tracked Billions of American Phone Calls BEFORE 9/11
USA Today reports:
The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.
For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said.
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The similarities between the NSA program and the DEA operation established a decade earlier are striking – too much so to have been a coincidence, people familiar with the programs said. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, “It’s very hard to see (the DEA operation) as anything other than the precursor” to the NSA’s terrorist surveillance.
Both operations relied on an expansive interpretation of the word “relevant,” for example — one that allowed the government to collect vast amounts of information on the premise that some tiny fraction of it would be useful to investigators. Both used similar internal safeguards, requiring analysts to certify that they had “reasonable articulable suspicion” – a comparatively low legal threshold – that a phone number was linked to a drug or intelligence case before they could query the records.
“The foundation of the NSA program was a mirror image of what we were doing,” said a former Justice Department official who helped oversee the surveillance. That official said he and others briefed NSA lawyers several times on the particulars of their surveillance program. Two former DEA officials also said the NSA had been briefed on the operation. The NSA declined to comment.
This is not the only time that the Drug Enforcement Administration has been at the center of U.S. spying. Edward Snowden revealed that the DEA “launders” information gained through mass surveillance by the NSA … and then forwards it to other government agencies to use to prosecute Americans … all the while lying about the source of the information.
In fact, widespread spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here, here, here, here, here, here and here).
And the government tapped the 9/11 hijackers’ phones, and heard the 9/11 hijackers’ plans from their own mouths. But that’s okay … spying on Americans never had anything to do with stopping terrorists.
Indeed, the entire "war on terror" started prior to 9/11. That doesn't have much to do with stopping terrorists, either.
Note: Yes, they're passing around your dick pics ...
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It was meant as sarcasm, dm.
Hey, that's anti-semitic! Oh, wait...
COUNTERPUNCH WEEKEND EDITION SEPTEMBER 27-29, 2008
How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security
An Israeli Trojan Horse
by CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM
Nah... just coincidence that it's getting a whole lot worse.
Yes, and:
Israeli spying on America is so rampant that U.S. officials have labeled it “alarming, even terrifying”.
The NSA voluntarily shares the raw data it collects on American citizens with Israel.
This includes raw data on U.S. government officials.
Indeed, leaked NSA documents show that U.S. intelligence officials are concerned that the NSA may be putting Israel’s security needs ahead of America’s.
But we have to be careful to distinguish between Zionists and Jewish people in general.
"...The NSA voluntarily shares the raw data it collects on American citizens with Israel. This includes raw data on U.S. government officials. .."
This is accurate only in context today. It was far, far worse when Comverse/Verint got their first contract with the DEA decades ago.
The original T2S2 automatic wiretapping equipment installed in AT&T regional switches in 1997 sort of worked backwards. It was Israel (via Verint) that created taps on request, transcribed tapped calls and transmitted them back to the DEA. The S2 server part of T2S2 was the tapping and snooping equipment in the regional switchs' black rooms - Sun servers with the Verint S2 software. Israel (Verint now - Comverse at the time) would not let the DEA operate the equipment or configure the software AT ALL - supposedly to ensure security and conform to Justice Department directives. Up until this point, a wiretap actually involved an AT&T or Verizon technician installing a hardware tap on the local or regional exchange equipment for that phone number. The T2S2 software allowed tapping of any phone number with a keystroke - no physical technicial work (or court order, wink wink) involved.
The deal was that the DEA would make a request to Verint to tap a certain number. Verint, from Israel, would connect to the appropriate S2 box and start recording all calls on that number. The recordings were encrypted on the S2 server via a proprietary Verint scheme and then transmitted overseas to Verint sweatshops in Israel, where they would be de-crypted on the T2 server and transcribed. The only thing the DEA ever saw were the manually transcribed conversations sent back from Israel.
This Israeli-based Verint 'service' was suppose to ensure that the DEA only got information it was allowed to collect. Verint would determine if the conversations involved a politician or military commander and send a message back to the DEA that they were not allowed to see the transcribed call. The weak-assed mea culpa by the DEA was "Well, the Israelis are told to immediately erase or destroy any data related to U.S. politicians and leaders if or when they discover any."
It worked on the U.S. side - the DEA didn't get information it wasn't suppose to get. On the Israeli side, there was a treasure trove of information easily accessed by Mossad or whomever. Israeli Intelligence had software on all the Verint transcriber's computers so they could see and listen to everything that came to or left Verint. The original transcribers had no U.S. security clearance and most were thought to be Israeli Intelligence plants. Israeli Organized Crime heads supplied plenty of other Verint tapping personnel. The transcription services were eventually in such great demand that Verint set up transcription centers in Mumbai (presumably all compromised as well to allow easy Israeli Intelligence access).
Worse yet, there was absolutely NO audit of what numbers or conversations Verint was actually recording. Tap orders and recordings from the S2 servers were all encrypted - the DEA and even the CIA had no idea how the system was actually being used. The DEA didn't have direct access to the T2S2 system so they had to rely on Verint for audit reports. The DEA simply got reports every month that showed Verint collection activities on DEA-ordered taps - nothing else. It was discovered later that Verint likely tapped and recorded tens of thousands of other numbers in addition to the DEA-ordered ones. It was so bad that Israeli Intelligence eventually had THEIR OWN T2 servers and enthusiastically tapped any U.S. phone they wanted directly, bypassing Verint contract transcribers all together. No U.S. law enforcement or intelligence people were allowed in the AT&T black rooms with the S2 servers - only Verint employees had access.
Now toss in the ATF, FBI, Secret Service and a dozen other government agencies with their own phone-tapping programs that jumped on Verint's 'service'. Anyone in the U.S. that questioned the assinine T2S2 system was relentlessly hounded by the Justice Department until they were fired. To this day, nobody has ever been allowed to investigate why the U.S. Department of Justice was so damn interested in protecting Comverse/Verint and - the Israeli Intelligences' wet dream - the T2S2 operations in Israel.
To their credit, the CIA raised the alarm and began amassing evidence of the well-comprimised T2S2 system and political leaders and bureaucrats in the U.S. acting as agents of Israel. The Justice Department couldn't touch the CIA and they (along with their Israeli masters) began to panic. This resulted in a battle to the death for the U.S. intelligence services. The CIA basically lost the war in 2004 with the passage of IRTPA and now plays second fiddle to the newly empowered Director of National Intelligence, now headed by Clapper. The DNI position existed for for a long time but in a much smaller role. The U.S. intelligence community was always lead and coordinated by the CIA until they were demoted in 2004.
The Office of the DNI was created (or at least rebuilt) in 2004 to ensure that only Israeli-firsters would be appointed and control all U.S. intelligence. A quick look at all the directors before and including Clapper should remove any doubt in anyone's mind that the DNI is basically an Israeli Intelligence suck-up serving the whims of it's Israeli master.
Are you a whistleblower, or are you quoting the Ketcham (or another) article?
I'm just another tin-foil-hat nutter, George. We were discussing this back in the days of dial-up modems and text-only Bulletin Board Systems. I know you go to great lenghts to back up your articles with supporting docs and I can't help you much there. We didn't have much of those newfangled 'hyperlinks' on the BBS. It's useless saying you can Google all this stuff because the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low - I'm sure you're aware of that, though. The subject is complex and has a lot of moving pieces.
The Ketcham article touches on a lot of this, but the rest is just from memory or speculation. I am satisfied that it makes sense, it's technicaly feasable, is documented to some degree and ties a lot of things together. So basically I have nothing for you - I won't insult your intelligence by saying "Trust me - I'm sure it's the truth!"
What I can offer is a basic framework for digging about this stuff. There are two slightly-overlapping major evesdropping programs that ramped up in the late 90's: The first was the NSA doing deep packet inspection of international internet traffic and international phone conversation evesdropping as detailed in your own article. The other main program was the DEA (and eventually other alphabet agency) domestic phone tapping effort. These two programs are sometimes confused in articles because they were systems of several hardware and software components - some made by the same company - that have repeatedly changed product and company names to obfuscate the sources. You don't distinguish the two separate programs in your article, but the equipment, software and legal authority are very different. That's not a criticism of your work - it's confusing to everyone (except us tin-foil-hat nutters). Then there's the distinction between voice and data for international, and the distinction between land-line, cell phone and IP voice calls for domestic spying PLUS internet traffic and social media monitoring (which is a novel in itself). Different software - different companies - different agencies involved. The only commonality is Israeli-based companies technology underlies most of these systems and they lobbied the shit out of .gov to make sure their systems were selected and installed. Israel owning their little bitch - the DNI - is just icing on the cake for them.
The first program: NSA deep packet inspection and other internet-related high jinks, monitored international traffic and was done at AT&T and Verizon's international fiber switches on either coast and coverd ANY international call or internet connection originating from or destined to anywhere outside the U.S.. It was permitted under international spying rules, not domestic rules. The AT&T black rooms were the center of that collection, and NARUS STA-6000 was a big component of the software. Verizon switches also did deep packet inspection, but used a different Verint product AFIK. The best documentation source is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who joined AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in a class action against AT&T. Most of the public stuff is summarized well with citations in this article. You cited Bamford in your article - his material is good, but pieces of it are a bit dated. Not his fault - we just know more now. I'm not aware of any Verizon lawsuits but a lot of their international call snooping stuff is assumed to be similar to the AT&T setup.
The second program originated with the Justice Department, specifically the DEA, contracting Comverse for automated domestic phone tapping equipment, one component in the form of T2S2 for transcribing intercepted calls. It evolved and more alphabet agencies besides Justice Department ones became clients of the system over time, but it's focus was always on domestic phone tapping or (now) Federal Title III- or Title 50-authorized Collection Systems. The taps were actually done by switch-based intercept software. The results of the tap were either recorded (on Narus equipment), translated and transcribed (on the T2S2 system) or just had their metadata logged on the switch equpment(DCM-x000 systems). CALEA mandated an interface on all domestic switches allowing development of automated intercepts. Domestic wiretapping did NOT require the split fiber trunk lines or black rooms like the international monitoring effort. It was just another box attached to the thousands of phone and cell company switches across the country. It is presumed that Israeli Intelligence and the Israeli mob either had backdoors into all those systems or had admin access for years. Connections were encrypted until the late 2000's, so the NSA and CIA didn't know who was using them for what purpose. They only knew what conversations they asked the equipment providers to record. Domestic data-snooping from the early 2000's is mostly speculative and assumes that internet switches 1) at the major ISPs or 2) on backbone switches were targeted.
The last confusing twist regarding Israel is that Comverse/Verint involved recorded phone conversations that could come from either international taps (FISA intercepts) or domestic taps (DoJ orders). Many of those recorded conversations were not in English, hence the Comverse translation and transcription offering which they staffed and supported MOSTLY overseas and MOSTLY in Israel. The original T2S2 was really a sort of elaborate voice mail system turned into a phone tap recording system and coupled with translation and transciption services. It could be ordered to intercept international voice calls because of the split fiber trunks but it couldn't open an intercept on domestic calls. That's where Israeli Intelligence either used a pre-built backdoor or hacked into various other switch-based tapping systems like DCS or had admin access directly into the switch intercept management system. Israeli companies are all behind the current versions of almost all switch-based intercept systems today, even though they may have been acquired by U.S. companies over the years.
The DCS switch-based intercept systems are discussed in these EFF FIOA documents. This is a typical job posting for a domestic-based T2S2 systems expert (formerly contracted offshore in Israel to Comverse). This .gov contract solicitation describes the more recent capabilities the DoJ wants in their T2S2 system. Note: T2S2 is a generic system term today, not a specific named product. No Snowden required - the stuff was already out there if you looked long enough. Nothing of his released so far wasn't already known except for the internal system names.
Of course there isn't going to be solid evidence that Israel telecom equipment companies or Israeli intelligence hacked and misused U.S. systems or listened to calls. Just whistleblower hearsay or dismissed lawsuits, plus a lot of coincidences that can only be explained by Israel having direct access to U.S. citizen's communications. Like I said in the other post, the DoJ would hammer anyone in .gov that was critical of the system or questioned Israel's unusual ability to access everything. Again, anecdotal evidence only unless anyone else started a lawsuit against the companies involved (and lived to tell about it).
It would seem you know some shit. Leave it at that for saftey?? Milestones
Like I said above, the link to your alarming and terrifying about Israel dying was an allegation by Susan rice and obama. It doesn't prove like you suggest it does. Same with your links to raw story and the propublica article which happens to be a soros outlet. All the articles says alleges or believes but does not PROVE IT. This is what I mean.
And I welcome your articles probably more than you look forward to mine. But please don't let me stop you.
The blame for being booted from ZH lies strictly...WITH YOU.
But instead of taking personal responsibility you decide to blame a contributor rather than take a look in the mirror.
I have enjoyed your posts before. I am pleased that you are back.
But it is not GW's fault.
And this reveals something rotten within your own character. It is rather childish.
So STOP IT and GROW UP.
Agreed, some of my favorite people are Jewish and not Zionist.
Geddy Lee for example - :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTOAUEZRBo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPAqEQ1_ctQ
Awesome musician, awesome person, genuine nice guy.