Comcast’s Spooky Employment Opportunities

[Joanne98]

by Tom Burghardt

Antifascist Calling…

When Secrecy News revealed last October that Comcast was charging $1,000 for the “initial start-up fee (including the first month of intercept service),” to illegally spy on Americans, it was viewed by business analysts as a lucrative “growth” market for enterprising telecoms.

That’s $1,000 per intercept, according to a Comcast Handbook for Law Enforcement. “Thereafter,” as Steven Aftergood reported, “the surveillance fee goes down to “$750.00 per month for each subsequent month in which the original order or any extensions of the original order are active.”

And with endless demands from America’s spymasters for “actionable intelligence,” the “Homeland Security” market is booming. As new opportunities for enrichment at taxpayers’ expense increase exponentially, the “public-private partnership” in political repression is generating a mini-boom in employment opportunities. Noah Shachtman writes:

Wanna tap e-mail, voice and Web traffic for the government? Well, here’s your chance. Comcast, the country’s second-largest Internet provider, is looking for an engineer to handle “reconnaissance” and “analysis” of “subscriber intelligence” for the company’s “National Security Operations.”

Day-to-day tasks, the company says in an online job listing, will include “deploy, installing] and remov strategic and tactical data intercept equipment on a nationwide basis to meet Comcast and Government lawful intercept needs.” The person in this “intercept engineering” position will help collect and process traffic on the company’s “CDV , HSI and Video” services. (”Comcast Is Hiring an Internet Snoop for the Feds,” Wired, May 30, 2008)


That’s right! Worried about losing your “informatics” job to a low-wage platform in Bangalore? Then fret no more, Comcast’s hiring!

The job requires,

“B.S. Degree in Information Systems Technology, MIS or related field or equivalent years of progressive experience and self-study,” a minimum of two years of policy or security engineering experience,” as well as the “ability to carry and coordinate delivery of a 50-pound server to support deployments in local market.”

If that’s too much for you, don’t worry. The company is also looking for an administrative assistant in its National Security Operations office. In that position, you’ll be able to handle “sensitive incoming Legal subpoenas and other material. Some of this material may be ‘Secret/Top Secret’ and be classified under applicable Federal Law.”


As whistleblower Babak Pasdar revealed, he assisted Comcast rival Verizon, when it set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between the company’s “main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center,” Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker.

“This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core–the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. ‘What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,’ the consultant said. ‘They’re providing total access to all the data’,” Hersh revealed.

One can only assume that Comcast and AT&T did the same. But we don’t know for sure, since telecom executives aren’t talking, in the interest of “national security,” of course.

And why would they? As members of the secretive National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), telecom executives representing the major communications, network service providers, information technology, finance and aerospace companies provide “industry-based advice and expertise” to the President “on issues and problems relating to implementing national security and emergency preparedness communications policy,” according to SourceWatch.

Created in 1982 when former president Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12382, NSTAC is, in all probability, facilitating U.S. telecommunication firms’ “cooperation” with NSA and other intelligence agencies’ efforts in conducting “warrantless wiretapping,” data-mining and “other” illegal surveillance programs in a highly-profitable arrangement with the Bush administration.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/comcasts-spooky-employment-opportunities/

[Mojorabbit]

1. I hope this will be ended

with the next administration but I think the genii is out of the bottle.

[barbtries]

2. i feel like there's nowhere to run