For those that don’t keep up with the tech news, recently there have been 2 lawsuits brought against AT&T for allegedly handing over 4 TB of data a day to the NSA.
The pod cast here gives an interview with an AT&T insider, “Deep Packet”, that explains everything pretty simply.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=318
Apparently, every AT&T aggregation switch has fibre connectivity with a seperate network passively monitoring all data that traverses its consumer networks. Data mining software from Narus is then used to sift through what “Deep Packet” reports as about 4 terabytes of data a day. The data mining software used is built around semantics, meaning it can extract usable data from the strings of ip addresses that make up your daily web browsing and e-mail sending routines.
Scary to think that AT&T would be so complicit in handing over customer information to the government. Its unprecedented and unacceptable.
From the case:
This case challenges the legality of Defendants’ participation in a secret and illegal government program to intercept and analyze vast quantities of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications, surveillance done without the authorization of a court and in violation of federal electronic surveillance and telecommunications statues, as well as the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Let your voice be known and help support the Electronic Frontier Foundation in fighting this grave errosion of our civil rights.