Last month I wrote about a story I've been following: the case of domestic spying on major American data carriers. At the time, using information available online as well as several news sources, I put forth some speculation.
First, that innocent Americans' data is being swept up and stored thanks to the use of the "full pipe" data gathering technique. Second, that the government's Total Information Awareness Program - which was "killed" but never defunded - was being used to build domestic spying facilities around the country.
I caught PBS's NOW program last Friday by chance, and I'm glad I did. They have resources not available to this lowly blogger. What PBS discovered will chill your bones. Yes, data on innocent Americans is being intercepted and stored. Additionally, more whistleblowers have come forward to establish the existence of another secret spy room on AT&T's network, built post 9-11.
The key findings in PBS's report:
- The government is intercepting most emails sent domestically.
- AT&T is collecting most emails and sharing them with the government, specifically the NSA (this is backed up by Klein's documents).
- The NSA spy room at AT&T's San Francisco facility is only accessible to the NSA and AT&T employees cleared by the NSA.
- The NSA's interest seems to be in MAE WEST, *the* major hub of American and international internet traffic on the West Coast.
- The device installed in San Francisco is capable of intercepting 10 GIGBYTES of data per second. In layman's terms, that means it could go through all the information in all the books in the Library of Congress in 15 minutes.
By Nicole Belle
— February 19, 2007
