"Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence"
Donald Rumsfeld

As I had said earlier in the pieces regarding this surveillance program and has been borne out in every detail during it's entire history, phone call surveillance is a crimson red and monstrous herring. Talk about phone conversations is absolutely irrelevant. The real story, the program which this administration and AT&T/Verizon/Sprint etc. want to keep muffled, is the Internet Surveillance program. Let me explain again in very simple terms.

This is a phone.

When you call somebody long distance from this little contraption, your voice, as an audible SOUND, is carried from the handset through several switches and more often than not, will be converted into NUMBERS that looks like this.

100100011110100100011110101101001011011

At the point your call reaches the big backbone that AT&T or (insert favorite telco here). Those numbers join billions of other promiscuous numbers over a fiber about this wide ||.

Along with those numbers that represent phonecalls are numbers that represent email, numbers that represent web browsing, numbers that represent porn, numbers that represent poems, numbers that represent other numbers. Numbers that represent corporate data which represent your medical data, your financial data going across these backbones. NUMBERS PEOPLE. NUMBERS, NUMBERS, NUMBERS

Now let me "speak" slowly and clearly. NUMBERS ARE NOT SOUNDS. I repeat. NUMBERS ARE NOT SOUNDS. This was understood pretty well by our ancestors, some time before the Greeks, but apparently in this era of mass insanity, those particular brain cells concerned with logic and clear thinking are somehow missing. From this seemingly small and self-evident fact comes an important, vitally important message:

99% of the time, politicians, both Democrat and Republican, and all of corporate media and polling firms will be using the words "WIRETAP", "LISTENING ON CONVERSATIONS" or some reference to audible communications. When anybody says "WIRETAP", BY LAW, they are not talking about looking at these NUMBERS going across AT&Ts backbone network. Nobody can hook a "WIRETAP" to a fiber. It is impossible. When anybody uses the word "WIRETAP" they ARE NOT talking about the current program. When anybody uses the phrase "COLLECTING NUMBERS" or the word "PEN REGISTER", they ARE talking about this program.

Senator Sessions and the rest of Republican cloaking device liberally sprinkled these words and others in their first attempt Thursday before the Committee on the Judiciary to put forth a legal claim that will be used continuously in the future by this Executive Branch and it's Congress and presented as justification to the Judicial Branch. Their frame will be:

There is no wiretapping or listening or datamining of conversations. We are collecting numbers, using pen trap registers, according to law. We are not invading privacy, because there is no 'reasonable expectation of privacy' for numbers on AT&T's network. That's the law.

And insofar as we allow these people to use these words and we in turn use them uncritically, we will ignore the real threat to our Fourth Amendment.

Now read the posts below for the detail. CorrenteWire, the original host of edited versions of these pieces, seems to be down.

Follow the Words

(12/21/05)

These fuckers are scared silly about this surveillance story. NYT bonzos called in to the White House. Gonzo and Condi fumbling for the right words. Cheney cuts his trip short.

What would be the legal ramifications of one agency, which is forbidden to spy domestically, were to set up the technical apparatus and then hand over the apparatus to another agency who actually had such domestic powers?

Why does the administration or it's mouthpieces always refer to “wiretaps” and phonecalls, i.e. analog type conversations? I draw your attention to the EFF's Analysis of Section 214 & 216 of the 2001 Patriot Act

http://www.eff.org/patriot/sunset/214.php

Before the PATRIOT Act, the government could only get a FISA pen-trap order when the communications to be monitored were likely to be either (1) those of an international terrorist or spy or (2) those of a foreign power or its agents relating to the criminal activities of an international terrorist or spy. PATRIOT 214 threw out this requirement. Now, any innocent person's communications can be tapped with a pen-trap so long as it is done "for" an intelligence investigation. The FBI doesn't have to demonstrate to the FISA court that the communications are relevant to its investigation. Nor can the court deny the FBI's request; if the FBI certifies the tap is "for" such an investigation, the FISA court must issue the order.

That Section 214 lowered the standard for FISA pen-traps is even more disturbing in light of the fact that PATRIOT Section 216 expanded their reach. Unlike regular wiretaps issued under much stricter standards, pen-traps aren't supposed to collect the actual content of your communications, such as what you say on the telephone. Instead, they capture "non-content" information about your communications, such as the telephone numbers that you dial or the numbers of people who call you.

Before PATRIOT, the statute defined pen registers and trap-and-trace devices solely in the context of telephone communications. But Section 216, which does not sunset, expanded the pen-trap definition to include devices that monitor Internet communications, without clarifying what portions of Internet communications are "content," requiring a full wiretap order, versus "non-content," which can be legally acquired only with a pen-trap order. At the very least, this change means that the government can use a pen-trap to see the email addresses of people you’re sending email to and the addresses of people who send email to you, along with the timestamp and size in bytes of each email. The FBI can monitor the IP addresses of all the computers you interact with over the Internet, or capture the IP addresses of every person visiting a particular website. Under the vaguely written statute, it may even be able to capture the URL of every web page that you read, although the FBI refuses to confirm or deny whether it has done so.

So what does this mean?

• Anytime anyone in the administration says that everything remains the same with “wiretaps”, they are parsing words. This has nothing to with “wiretaps.” “Wiretap”, in this instance, is a term of art referring to analog communications. The above section of the Patriot Act is referring to Internet monitoring.
  


• As most online discussion has pointed out, this gave Bush the powers he needed. So why did he not get the warrants needed retroactively? I believe that the law was drafted in haste by lawyers and staff who had only a cursory knowledge of the technology. Once this was put into operation and the administration saw the result (e.g. 9,000 traffic flows with 18000 IP addrs) the career DOJ guys freaked. They probably registered their opinion which is probably sitting in the NYTimes safe, still unpublished. Now that's happened before.

Network Architecture of Treason

(12/24/05)

So how would an agency go about surveillance on overseas Internet traffic on a massive scale?

First of all, one has to place monitors, probes or taps on the Internet. Where would one place them? That's pretty simple. Let's look at CAIDA's Internet topology map. http://www.caida.org/analysis/topology/as_core_network/AS_Network.xml

This shows a snapshot of the major "choke" points for Internet traffic as it exists today. There are not that many core points, especially if we are only concerned with international traffic.

(Post Post - Does this image look familiar??)

(Courtesy CorrenteWire placeholder)

Let's just say that we want to set up monitoring on the top 20 nodes in this diagram. Now what does our monitor or probe need to look like in terms of compute power and storage.

For that we can go to a typical packet trace analysis of one the core carriers at this link.

http://ipmon.sprint.com/packstat/packet.php?040206

Notice anything interesting here? Link utilization for these links is minimal. These OC48 links can support up to 2.5 gigabits/sec but the utilization is barely more than 100 megabits per second. And the storage needed for these traces is minimal as well.

But do we have to monitor all that traffic? If we look at the application breakdown, we see that appr. 50% is http traffic. If we add email, the total is about 60%. That means that we're looking at doing deep packet inspection, etc. on only about 50 or 60 megabits/ sec. You can do that with an off-the-shelf $1000 Dell server. Storage is just as cheap. In fact, I found a little Powerpoint slide on the Internet that Amogh Dhamdhere from Georgia Tech did, illustrating the Sprint IPMON architecture.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2004/cs8803ntm_fall/amogh.ppt

Monitoring like this for research and Quality of Service motives has been going on for years. Remember, when TCP/IP was first developed, security was not the issue, survivability was the issue. More recently, packet inspection techniques have been applied by the major ISPs to thwart Denial of Service attacks, worms and so on.

So how does one spot a DoS attack or worm? Simply by recognizing a pattern or signature in the traffic. What is the difference between a malicious pattern and a certain set of words in an email or an http flow? Simple semantics…or semiotics depending on your philosophy.

Military coups don't happen in our neck of the woods.

Vidiot Speak

and now a word from our sponsor.

WARNING...VERY DISTURBING...GRAPHICAL VIOLENCE DEPICTED

But, of course, ultimately for their own good.
via the unfiltered lens of Iraq Dispatches: Fallujah Pictures

Well...Since there were no "embedded reporters" along, I guess we can simply ignore these for lack of "objectivity." And once again, all I can think about is that clip from Robert Bly's poem The Teeth Mother Naked at Last

But if one of those children came near that we have set on fire,
came toward you like a gray barn, walking,
you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane,
you would tear at your shirt with blue hands,
you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to back up,
the pupils of your eyes would go wild.

If a child came by burning, you would dance on your lawn,
trying to leap into the air, digging into your cheeks,
you would ram your head against the wall of your bedroom
like a bull penned too long in his moody pen.

If one of those children came toward me with both hands
in the air, fire rising along both elbows,
I would suddenly go back to my animal brain,
I would drop on all fours, screaming,
my vocal chords would turn blue; so would yours,
it would be two days before I could play with one of my own
children again.

DAMN THE WAR...DAMN IT'S ENABLERS...DAMN THOSE WHO FIND ANYTHING STRATEGIC HERE...IF THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A SOUL, you have lost it.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'We have to protect people'

Yep...Can't have homos doing things like...WRITING!!!!

Things are looking up in Falluja, eh?

A very moving "passage", as it were.

Eschaton

Thanks to George and Clear Channel, I can now officially start translating into German. Just a translation mind you. Using your words.

via Suburban Guerrilla..
Unserer Fuhrer

Has a nice ring to it, eh?

From the Boston Herald...Chief Economist for Morgan Stanley..."economic Armageddon"

BostonHerald.com - Business: Economic `Armageddon' predicted

Add that to Volcker's 75% chance of "catastrophe" and what do you get?

I'm not worried...I'm 100% into U.S. Bonds...oh...waitaminute

via Slashdot...

Bill Gates patents Aristotle's Square of Opposition, nihilism and the Concept of Being.

Next up, Microsoft patents logic...offers to sell it to Bush administration.

Slashdot | Microsoft Patents 'IsNot', Enlists WTO

Hey...Look! A trove of secret inteligence reports!!!

USNews.com: The Baghdad files: A trove of secret intelligence reports spells out in chilling detail how Iraq's dangerous next-door neighbor is aiding the anti-U.S. insurgency there (11/22/04)

Well...There's the hook...Wonder if anybody takes the bait??


That was quick

Make no mistake, people: we are at war with Iran, a conflict that's very similar to our direct engagement of Chinese infantry and Russian pilots during the Korean War.

Yep...similar...Also similar to our use of Saddam as a proxy during Iran/Iraq v1.0, but personally I've lost track of the blowback quotient with these guys.

Iran's nuclear motivation hinges on the clearest possible avenues of self-interest:

A. Blackmailing the West into providing beneficial agreements (trade and otherwise) by threatening nuclear development.

B. The exponential increase in prestige provided by the eventual obtention of nuclear weapons. This includes an Islamic counterweight to Israeli nuclear dominance of the region, a guarantee against attempted external overthrow or conventional retaliation against acts of aggression (the Doctrine of Extended Deterrence), and a new solidification of fundamentalist authority at home.

C. The ultimate use of nuclear weapons on the United States or Israel via a terrorist proxy.

Okay. I give up. There's the mushroom cloud thingy. Where do I buy the war bonds????

Your daily dose of Wolcott. Sure to take the edge off the daily hangover we're now suffering through.

James Wolcott: Rice and No Beans

So, just to keep up to date...

FCC says "We own/control your PCs"
Hollywood says "We own/control your entertainment"

Suburban Guerrilla

You'll Go Blind If You Keep Blogging!

Michael Powell Wants Your Spam

Susan Crawford blog :: Does the White House know?

So the FCC wants control over all these radical computers, eh?

FCC's position is that its Act gives it regulatory power over all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus "associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received" via all interstate radio and wire communication. That's quite a claim.

Gimme a break. Where are the 101st Fighting Keyboarders when you need 'em?

Welcome to Hue v3.1...or as the idiot on CNN called it ..."Hugh."

gawd...and they call these guys the liberal media elite????


Concord Monitor Online via First Draft - Operation Al Fajr: When FUBAR Meets War Cirmes

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Dr. Ahmed Ghanim's nightmarish week began with a phone call in the operating room of a triage center in downtown Fallujah.

On the line was the manager of the city's General Hospital. Iraqi national guardsmen and U.S. Marines, the manager said, had entered the hospital, handcuffed the doctors and were forcing the patients out to the parking lot.

...snip

Late Tuesday, a bomb struck one side of the triage center. Ghanim ran out of the building.

A second bomb hit, crashing through the roof and destroying most of the facility. Ghanim believes it killed at least two or three of the young resident doctors working there and most of the patients.

"At that moment, I wished to die," he said. "It was a catastrophe."

Afterward, he said, he half-ran, half-wandered through Fallujah, dodging explosions that seemed to be everywhere. He took shelter in an empty house and did not move.

"I saw the injured people on the street, covered in blood, staggering, screaming, shouting, 'Help me! Help me!' but we could not get out and help them because we would be killed."

At one point, he looked out and saw a cousin in the street; he had been wounded. "I could not do anything for him, I could not move," Ghanim said. "He died. There was no mercy."

"Any idea who was slaughtered in those slaughterhouses?"
--Wolf Blitzer

Since most all the slaughterers have left Fallujah, (oh yeah, like Zarquawi's gonna still be there), watch for this to be the justification of the whole raid.

Slaughter...It's what slaughterer's have for breakfast, after their rape rooms, and their mass graves.

Yahoo! News - Name Mixup Behind Air France Groundings

First they came for the Welsh Insurance agents...

via AP
"Pierre Debue, director of the French border police, said one name on the list turned out to be that of a 5-year-old child. The Wall Street Journal on Friday said two other suspected terrorists turned out to be an elderly Chinese woman and a Welsh insurance agent."

I mean, it musta been the names...right? Have you ever seen them Welsh King names? My lovely wife's family includes some of those guys. Names like Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Madog ap Maredudd...ughh.
I can just envision the Homeland Defense computers mining away at the data, then one of these names show up, and it matches some suspicious Viagra spam cover name for a suspected cell and there you are!

Is Tom Jones his real name?


p.s. And Candy Crowley is interviewing Asa Hutchinson on CNN...
Asa: "I hope this makes travelers feel safer about traveling."

Ah'll just stay on mah mule.....

MSNBC - Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam

"It's a lucrative business," says Hassan Mneimneh, codirector of an Iraqi exile research group reviewing millions of captured Iraqi government documents. "There's an active document trade taking place … You have fraudulent documents that are being fabricated and sold" for hundreds of dollars a piece.

How do I get in on this action?!? "Psssst...Hey Rupert?...kid?....Want summa these funny papers??? Sorta like that PNAC pamphlet in yer Daddy's bottom drawer. "

Will Safire restate???

"Example: Dr. Ayad Allawi, an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies, told Britain's Daily Telegraph last week that a memo has been found from Saddam's secret police chief to the dictator dated July 1, 2001, reporting that the veteran terrorist Abu Nidal had been training one Mohamed Atta in Baghdad. Nobody disputes that a few months after Atta's 9/11 suicide mission, Nidal was permanently silenced by Saddam's police, the only "suicide" to be found with four bullets in his head."