Yahoo News is linking to the AT&T documents that Wired leaked

[tuvor]

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Documents Reveal AT&T-NSA Surveillance Details

Wired magazine has posted the full text of the evidence former AT&T technician Mark Klein has presented to back up an accusation that AT&T helped the federal government spy on phone and Internet traffic.

The documents, here in PDF form, include descriptions of the fiber-optic splitters, routers and wiring Klein alleges that AT&T set up in "secret rooms" to monitor traffic across its WorldNet Internet Backbone.

Klein's documents describe the setup, testing and maintenance of equipment for the locked wiring closets—which were located within larger networking facilities but were accessible only to specific management-level technicians with the right security clearance.

Central to the surveillance setup in each location, Klein writes, was a packet-inspection unit called a Semantic Traffic Analyzer from Narus, whose flagship products are designed for IP security intercept and traffic classification.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20060522/tc_zd/178927

[On the Road]

1. The Thing That Confuses Me About This

is that it's discussed in terms of the NSA phone records controversy. What Klein described was a method of monitoring internet traffic.

There seem to have been two separate efforts for call detail and internet browsing. I hope one of them does not get subordinated and forgotten.

[unhappycamper]

3. Telephone and internet data move over the same backbone.

IIRC, telephone conversations are converted from analog to digital when they leave your home switch. In a digital format, telephone coversations are just another type of data moving through the backbone network.

[On the Road]

4. Voice is Generally Digitized but Not Transmitted in Packets

Except for niche application such as prepaid cards and VOIP, which use packet-switching to lower costs, there is a dedicated circuit set up for each call. The two kinds of traffic cannot be mixed on the same network.

[Spazito]

2. It's good to see this on Yahoo, I have voted it up

thanks for the heads up!