NSA Supercenters to Store Americans' Private Data

Permanently

By Thomas R. Eddlem

October 29, 2009 "New American" -- The National Security Agency

is building huge new storage facilities to store the unconstitutionally
gained data on the American people's telephone calls and Internet traffic
permanently, including new buildings in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah,
and San Antonio, Texas.
The NSA has beenkeeping permanent records of all American's
telephone call habits and Internet traffic since shortly after September
11, 2001, according to major news reports, without the constitutionally
required warrants from a court.
No longer able to store all the intercepted phone calls and e-mail in its
Ft. Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is engaging in its own
housing boom. How much data will these giant, multibillion dollar new
facilities hold? According to James Bamford of the New York Review of
Books, the facility in Utah alone could hold data that will be measured in
Yottabytes. Never heard of Yottabytes? You're not alone. Most computers
sold at stores still measure their storage at gigabytes, or billions of bits
of data. A few store a terrabyte of information, or one trillion bits of
information. That's 1,000,000,000,000 pieces of information. Yottabytes
is the highest number that has yet been named in computer information.
The number is septillions of billions of bits of data, or
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of data.
In his review of Matthew M. Aid's new book on the NSA, The Secret
Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency, Bamford
noted that the NSA assault on the Constitution's Fourth Amendment has
taken place without public opposition or even public debate. “Unlike the
British government, which, to its great credit, allowed public debate on
the idea of a central data bank,” Bamford wrote, “the NSA obtained the
full cooperation of much of the American telecom industry in utmost
secrecy after September 11.” And when the British government held that
debate, the people rose up against such a “big brother”-style plan:
When the plans were released by the UK government, there was an
immediate outcry from both the press and the public, leading to the
scrapping of the "big brother database," as it was called. In its place,
however, the government came up with a new plan. Instead of one vast,
centralized database, the telecom companies and Internet service
providers would be required to maintain records of all details about
people's phone, e-mail, and Web-browsing habits for a year and to
permit the government access to them when asked. That has led again
to public anger and to a protest by the London Internet Exchange, which
represents more than 330 telecommunications firms.
Not so in America, where economically challenged communities are
welcoming the multibillion dollar construction work to create the
facilities. Freedom can be traded for temporary prosperity, according to
local officials in Utah, as reported by a news segment on KSL, Salt Lake
City's NBC affiliate.
“The data center is estimated to be 1 million square feet, sitting on 200-
acres, and it couldn't come at a better time for Utah's economy,” KSL
reported, and will cost taxpayers nearly $2 billion. The report went on to
enthuse that “even Congressman Jason Chaffetz is excited. From
Washington he told KSL News: 'It's a benefit to our economy and our
national security.'"
In San Antonio, the NSA is dramatically expanding an existing facility
rather than creating a new one. San Antonio Current writer Greg M.
Schwartz explained how the expanded facility would be 470,000 square
feet, almost the size of the Alamodome. Schwartz revealed that San
Antonio officials actually courted the NSA, sending trade delegations to
Ft. Meade to win the expansion. “The new facility is a potential boon to
the local economy since it’s reportedly going to employ around 1,500
people,” Schwartz noted, “but questions remain about whether there will
be adequate oversight to prevent civil-rights violations like Uncle Sam’s
recent notorious warrantless wiretapping program.” Actually, there's no
honest question about that. Schwartz is just politely saying in journalistic
kant that, like Salt Lake City, San Antonio expects to profit from the
destruction of the Constitution's Bill of Rights. Temporarily, anyway.
Schwartz got a personal dose of the destruction of the Bill of Rights while
preparing his story for the San Antonio Current. “Readers are advised
not to take any photos unless you care to be detained for at least a 45-
minute interrogation by the National Security Agency, as this reporter
was,” Schwartz wrote. The security guards asked, but did not demand,
that Schwartz destroy photos he had taken of the facility.
They didn't take his camera — this time, that is.
Of course, if the NSA is free to ignore one part of the Bill of Rights, the
Fourth Amendment prohibition on searches without court warrants and
probable cause, what security can Americans have in preventing the NSA
from ignoring the other parts of the Constitution … such as freedom of
the press under the First Amendment?
© The New American Magazine
 Edited on Fri May-26-06 11:52 AM by leveymg
NSA Scandal (Pt. 2): Verint – NSA's Foreign
Partner
This series on NSA contractor scandals details the activities of the
private companies that have taken over domestic surveillance under the
Bush Administration. One of the most important of these corporations is
Vertint, an Israel-based electronic communications surveillance outfit,
which in alliance with VeriSign, the operator of the .com, .net, and .edu
registries, monitors most of the sites on the World Wide Web. If you're
viewing this article on a .com, NETDISCOVERY -- the Internet surveillance
system developed jointly by Verint and VeriSign -- is monitoring your on-
line experience at this very moment.

In the last installment, we reported that the NSA similarly employs

NeuStar, the top .us and .biz Internet domain registry as a conduit to
monitor web-communications networks in the US and to monitor the cell
phone traffic in as many as 210 countries worldwide. See, Pt. 1, NSA
SCANDAL: NeuStar - Telcom Scapegoat or NSA Front Company?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/20/16437/4670

MORE, below:

When Congress passed the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law

Enforcement Act (CALEA), all telephone networks operating within the
United States were required by law to install equipment that would allow
the FBI and other investigative agencies to tap your phone. At the time,
that technology did not exist in the United States as an off-the-shelf
product, but Comverse Infosys, a company headquartered in Israel,
stepped into this market void with its well-developed telcom network
surveillance systems.

By the year 2000, practically every broadband-capable phone system in

the US and in many foreign countries were in the process of installing
Comverse Infosys systems. Comverse Technology, Inc. is now also the
leading vendor of commercially-available web-based surveillance
equipment through its subsidiary, Verint. The company describes its
products as capable of intercepting virtually all forms of network
communications worldwide:
http://www.verint.com/lawful_interception/index.cfm

Verint Communications Interception Solutions

. . . Verint Communications Interception Solutions help extract the most

important information from voice and data collected over virtually any
type of network. This actionable intelligence helps organizations rapidly
detect and address security threats and build evidence for legal
prosecution.

Verint offers a comprehensive, integrated portfolio of interception,

monitoring, and analytic solutions. Our solutions are ETSI and CALEA
compliant and work with virtually any type of network, content,
application, or service. And our worldwide presence positions us to
address new challenges and technologies as they emerge, providing our
customers with solutions that help them achieve their objectives.

The UK telecom trade publication, The Register gave a detailed

description in 2003 of how Verint’s surveillance products work:
www.sianews.com / modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=758

The RELIANT system acts as a government agency's big ear, collecting

and managing intercepted voice, e-mail, fax, SMS, data, chat, and Web
browsing -- all on a single platform. On the delivery side, STAR-GATE
does the actual wiretapping, and is primarily marketed to telephone
companies trying to comply with the 1994 Communications Assistance
for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which requires telecommunications
carriers to keep their networks wiretap friendly for the FBI. An ISP
version of STAR-GATE lets Internet providers conduct lawful surveillance
of their customers and send the intercepted data to law enforcement
over private networks.

However, Verint developed another, even more massive interception

system: NetDiscovery. In 2002, Verint partnered with VeriSign, the
domain name registrar for all .com, .org., and edu sites, to install the
NetDiscovery network traffic analyzer and diverter system mandated by
FCC interpretation of CALEA. This arrangement was described as the
foundation of “the Wiretap Friendly Web” by telecom industry writer
Annalee Newitz:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/06/fbi_wiretap_bon... /

VeriSign's NetDiscovery service allows carriers to outsource the

processing of all court order requests simply by establishing what the
company calls a "secure" connection to its servers. Raj Puri, VeriSign VP
of Communications Services, said, "This is a natural extension of our
services as a provider for multiple wireline and cable providers. We have
the infrastructure in our network that providers need to be compliant ."
And, he added, "We are involved with standards-making and the FCC. So
we've got a full solution for providers."

In 2002, VeriSign partnered with a company called Verint on

NetDiscovery. Verint markets devices like STAR-GATE and RELIANT, both
of which are designed specifically to assist with the lawful interception of
data from broadband providers as well as telecoms. As VeriSign goes
full-bore into the CALEA compliance market, Verint stands to do well with
this partnership.

And there's no doubt that the current furor over CALEA is bringing in
new customers for companies like VeriSign, as well as its partners and
competitors. "This FCC thing has heightened awareness. We have seen
our sales activity increase over the past several months," VeriSign's Puri
reported. Fiducianet's Warren has seen a similar trend. " has brought a
lot of attention to this issue which helps our business," he said. "Carriers
look at whether they're compliant and then they turn to vendors to get it
done efficiently."

Since that 2004 article was published, Fiducianet was bought out by
NeuStar. http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=67426
NeuStar attracted a furor a couple weeks ago when telcom clients ATT,
Verizon & Bell South claimed they had avoided legal liability for the
warrantless transfer of customer data to the NSA by having NeuStar
actually sell the information. See, Pt. 1; also, see,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_22/b398...

With NeuStar monitoring traffic in the .us and .biz domains along with
much of the world’s cell phone traffic, and VeriSign using Verint’s
NetDiscovery intercept system and its older STAR-GATE and RELIANT
systems on telephone networks, NSA and its partners pretty much have
all phones and cell phones tapped, and has a map and a portal into the
entire Internet, including your computer and this web site.
_____________________________________________________

Footnote 1. Based in Sophia Antipolis (France), the European

Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is officially responsible for
standardization of within Europe. These technologies include
telecommunications, broadcasting and related areas such as intelligent
transportation and medical electronics.

______________________________________________________

2006. Mark G. Levey

Washington
One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex