Too Many Stories...

... and not nearly enough time to do any of them justice, especially if you're an 8th or 9th tier blog writer with just enough time & energy for a post this PM. But not that it matters -heh - I'm only writing for me.

Tonight I'd like to point you to a story that hasn't drawn very much MSM attention at all, one that nonetheless I think is quite important. There is a certain Mr. Mark Klein, a currently retired San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, who revealed a couple of years ago the existence of a secret surveillance room at the SF telephone exchange run by the NSA. Tonight he is Washington D.C. to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to the telcos. The equipment in and cabling to, essentially a fiber-optic line splitter, is sufficient for the NSA to have snooped on every single packet of data that passed through that telephone exchange - email, web browsing, voice, fax, basically whatever came through that cable the NSA has. Furthermore the location of the exchange makes it optimal for collecting domestic traffic, not the foreign communications traffic Bushco claims to have been monitoring, He or at least his information is behind or involved in one of the suits against AT&T that Bushco wishes to have thrown out with the retroactive immunity in the latest FISA bill. Think about it, the reason the telco liability was in the original FISA bill was that those who drafted it did not trust the government, they instead insisted the telcos (and others) be held personally liable for damages as a check against a dishonest NSA/CIA/FBI/DOJ. TPM Muckraker has a good summary along with a number of good links, if you're interested, it's a good place to start.

Remember, this sort of installation gives the NSA access to everything, and yes, I do mean access to every single data packet on that cable. Most of us are familiar with the Orwellian aspects of this in terms of Big Brother and political spying. There are other ramifications, however, ones that don't seem to get much discussion, ramifications such as the commercial one. Say your company does IT services and you are bidding for a contract with a potential major customer. Given the absolute politicization of the US Government at this time, the fact that "pay for play" is how things work these days, what's to stop some federal official from contacting a high-level officer of your company, informing them of what the government knows about your company's bid, and mentioning that your competitor has been making greater donations to the RNC then your company has and that for the right price, the official might be willing to share details of your competitor's bid with you or at the very least, offering not to share your bid details with your competitor? "Oh and by the way, these discussions are both deniable and state secrets meaning say anything of this to the media and you will be convicted of treason or disappeared". Think I'm just being paranoid?

If you are not outraged it means you have not been paying attention.