Deep Packet Speaks

Via Majikthise, an interview with anonymous AT&T engineer on the company's cooperation with massive NSA data mining of voice and data traffic.

Comments

[Big Dark Willy]

Goddam blog-blocking NetNanny. Like I've got time at home to read this sort of thing.

[Number 6]

You know, when my Dad told me years ago that long-distance calls were scanned for certain key-words, I took it with a large grain of salt. Once again, Dad was right.

[RandyAyn]

So this is what Gonzales was blushing about...

[Ken Shultz]

I wonder if "Falun Gong" is one of the keywords?

[Johnny]

Comrades, I think you should all be a bit more careful.

[dhex]

jesus. where's my [redacted]?

[Rich Ard]

...and I can't punish them with my telecommunications dollar because I have another year or so on my contract, so cancelling my service would only earn them a bigger short-term profit.

[Richard Nixon]

That is [expletive deleted] hilarious.

[strat]

I think it's funny when journalists try to play secret agent...Did anyone else find it humorous that while attempting to evade monitoring by the omnivorous federal beast under discussion, they decided to use a CHAT SESSION ON THE INTERNET?

Who cares about the guy's voice? Just look through the data archives and match the text from the interview.

Of course, my understanding is that the USG is prohibited from monitoring the communications of "U.S. persons"...oh...nevermind.

I sure hope he used TOR.

[Ken Shultz]

When I first heard about this, I thought it would get pretty big pretty fast...

...but then I read the the scoop over at [redacted], which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that [redacted] agents are currently [redacted] every single [redacted] made in or out of the [redacted]. ...and what's worse, they actually used information during the [redacted] to help them [redacted] every [redacted] that knew about it. ...and they're holding them at [redacted]!

Furthermore, it shows that this has been going on for a long time, and that the [redacted] not only knew about it, he authorized it without any kind of warrant much less a judge. When I read, "[redacted]", I thought, "Come on!" ...That goes beyond a violation of [redacted]; that's not just unconstitutional--that's unAmerican! ...and the freakin' [redacted] signature is right on it!

...but don't take my word for it; read it for yourself at http://www.[link redacted]. Knowing about it, that's the foundation of American democracy.

[M']

...Did anyone else find it humorous that while attempting to evade monitoring by the omnivorous federal beast under discussion, they decided to use a CHAT SESSION ON THE INTERNET?

Very much so...thanks. Least they could have done is use a VPN. It's one reason I doubt the integrity of D. Packet and why I didn't bother listening to the interview. Someone involved in what they claim to be involved in-- much less being an engineer-- would have been concerned. You may claim that I'm leaping to conclusions if this all was addressed satisfactorily somewhere.

Besides that, it is false to claim that any audio effect can simply be reversed just because you have "enough" processing power (you can do ANYTHING with ENOUGH PROCESSING POWER, right?). D. Packet could have spoken into a vocoder and had nothing to worry about since the original audio isn't present.

[b-psycho]

It sounds like the way they did it was with the guy giving all the answers via chat, while all the questions were by phone. I'm no expert at this type of thing, but I'm assuming the increase in security comes from each side of the conversation going through a different medium. Sounds flimsy to me still, but that's probably what they were thinking.